PandaeatsBamboo

Goodbye MX200 and MX300. Hello Spark Room Kit and Room 55!

2017-11-06T03:13:00.001+08:00

A few EoS/EoL announcements that you might need to be aware:

MX200G2:
https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/collaboration-endpoints/telepresence-mx-series/eos-eol-notice-c51-739931.html?emailclick=CNSemail

MX300G2:
https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/collaboration-endpoints/telepresence-mx-series/eos-eol-notice-c51-739932.html?emailclick=CNSemail

The recommended refresh will be Spark Room 55 or Spark Room Kit.

CE8.3:
https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/collaboration-endpoints/telepresence-mx-series/eos-eol-notice-c51-739933.html?emailclick=CNSemail

You should start moving to CE 9.x, a lot of good stuff in the latest release:
https://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en/us/td/docs/telepresence/endpoint/software/ce9/release-notes/ce-software-release-notes-ce9.pdf

P40 camera related bundle:
https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/collaboration-endpoints/telepresence-quick-set-series/eos-eol-notice-c51-739957.html?emailclick=CNSemail
https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/collaboration-endpoints/telepresence-quick-set-series/eos-eol-notice-c51-739956.html?emailclick=CNSemail

Telnet is missing in High Sierra

2017-11-06T01:16:00.005+08:00

I haven't update this blog for quite some time, with a lot of good excuses, such as spending time with the kids, moving to a new team, working on the final year of my LLB degree, etc. Still I want to find some time to share what I have learnt in my every day life. I've just got an issue with my MBP after upgrading to High Sierra.

I love to press the upgrade/update button every time I have a chance to, and as I am so busy lately I haven't done it in the earliest possible time. I decided to do it yesterday and I just wanted to telnet to a switch in my home to change some configuration, and I've got this unbelievable error:

-bash: telnet: command not found

The telnet client is gone! Although there are many workarounds to get it back, such as using another client like SecureCRT, or change everything to ssh which is more secure, etc. I still like to do it with my terminal as it is handy. So this is what I have done to bring it back.

Download inetutils here:
http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/inetutils/

I have downloaded inetutils-1.9.4.tar.gz to my MBP.

Untar and unzip it:
tar zxf inetutils-1.9.4.tar.gz

Build from source:
./configure
make
sudo make install

Verify it:
which telnet

And you should see telnet is built and installed in /usr/local/bin
/usr/local/bin/telnet

And now you get your telnet back!

Getting Netflix to work with IPv6

2016-12-25T22:21:00.000+08:00

Haven't update the blog for a while as I was busy at work, study and personal live. During Christmas I want to watch a movie, and I've subscribed Netflix as a result. I assume what I need to do is simply go to the Netflix website and choose the movie that I want, and watch it. However, life is not as simple as you think. I am keep on getting error saying that I have some kind of network connection / proxy issue to prevent me from watching the movie.

After some digging, seems Netflix doesn't like IPv6, especially the setup in my home, where I have my v6 connectivity tunnel through Hurricane Electric. To verify what IPv6 address Netflix is using:

$ dig -t AAAA cbp-us.nccp.netflix.com

; <<>> DiG 9.8.3-P1 <<>> -t AAAA cbp-us.nccp.netflix.com

;; global options: +cmd

;; Got answer:

;; ->>HEADER<<- 64879="" id:="" noerror="" opcode:="" query="" span="" status:="">

;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 10, AUTHORITY: 4, ADDITIONAL: 2

;; QUESTION SECTION:

;cbp-us.nccp.netflix.com. IN AAAA

;; ANSWER SECTION:

cbp-us.nccp.netflix.com. 0 IN CNAME cbp-us.nccp.geo.netflix.com.

cbp-us.nccp.geo.netflix.com. 0 IN CNAME cbp-us.nccp.us-west-2.prodaa.netflix.com.

cbp-us.nccp.us-west-2.prodaa.netflix.com. 60 IN AAAA 2620:108:700f::36ba:c314

cbp-us.nccp.us-west-2.prodaa.netflix.com. 60 IN AAAA 2620:108:700f::3270:4b38

cbp-us.nccp.us-west-2.prodaa.netflix.com. 60 IN AAAA 2620:108:700f::340a:2bb5

cbp-us.nccp.us-west-2.prodaa.netflix.com. 60 IN AAAA 2620:108:700f::3695:797a

cbp-us.nccp.us-west-2.prodaa.netflix.com. 60 IN AAAA 2620:108:700f::3645:db3d

cbp-us.nccp.us-west-2.prodaa.netflix.com. 60 IN AAAA 2620:108:700f::3420:816

cbp-us.nccp.us-west-2.prodaa.netflix.com. 60 IN AAAA 2620:108:700f::3459:e8e6

cbp-us.nccp.us-west-2.prodaa.netflix.com. 60 IN AAAA 2620:108:700f::36bb:40b9

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:

prodaa.netflix.com. 68907 IN NS ns-1606.awsdns-08.co.uk.

prodaa.netflix.com. 68907 IN NS ns-1489.awsdns-58.org.

prodaa.netflix.com. 68907 IN NS ns-375.awsdns-46.com.

prodaa.netflix.com. 68907 IN NS ns-749.awsdns-29.net.

;; ADDITIONAL SECTION:

ns-375.awsdns-46.com. 68861 IN A 205.251.193.119

ns-749.awsdns-29.net. 68861 IN A 205.251.194.237

;; Query time: 63 msec

;; SERVER: 218.252.0.24#53(218.252.0.24)

;; WHEN: Sun Dec 25 22:13:54 2016

;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 507

This is the ACL I've implemented in my 1941 router to filter out the IPv6 address block of Netflix. With this workaround I am now able to watch some movies during the festive season!

sh access-list block-netflix

IPv6 access list block-netflix

deny ipv6 any 2620:108:700F::/48 (412 matches) sequence 20

permit ipv6 any any (1804317 matches) sequence 30

interface GigabitEthernet0/1

! My LAN side interface

ipv6 traffic-filter block-netflix in

end

Cisco Meeting Server (CMS) Part 3 - Integrating Core and Edge

2016-09-14T15:59:00.001+08:00

Part 1 - Making your first call to CMS
Part 2 - XMPP and CMA
Part 3 - Integrating Core and Edge

In this post, we are going to deploy a single CMS Core and a single CMS Edge.

1. Certificate for Core and Edge. Like our previous posts in Part 1 and Part 2, I am going to use self signed cert for simplicity.

CMS Core:
pki selfsigned core

CMS Edge:
pki selfsigned edge

2. Using WinSCP or other SCP / sFTP client, to download the CMS Core certificate, in my case it is core.crt. Copy this Core certificate to Edge using your SCP client.

In CMS Edge, create the loadbalancer service module and config the certificate for authentication. You will need to trust your Core certificate in Edge. In my lab it is a single NIC Edge.

CMS Edge:
loadbalancer auth edge edge.key edge.crt core.crt
loadbalancer trunk edge a:4999
loadbalancer trunk public edge a:5222 lo:5222
loadbalancer enable edge

3. In CMS Core, you are required to create a trunk. Similarly, copy the edge certificate to core, you will need to trust the edge certificate in core. 10.1.90.124 is the edge IP address.

CMS Core:
trunk create trunktoedge xmpp
trunk auth trunktoedge core.key core.crt edge.crt
trunk edge trunktoedge 10.1.90.124 4999
trunk enable trunktoedge

You can use the trunk debug trunktoedge (the tag name) to see whether the trunk is up on core.

4. There are a few service modules can be enabled on Edge. If you want to enable SIP Edge, you will need the below command:

CMS Edge:
sipedge public a:5061
sipedge public-ip 1.2.3.4
sipedge private a:3061
sipedge certs sipedge.key sipedge.crt

5. Another service module on Edge is TURN. To enable TURN, you will need the following command:

turn credentials admin admin xcloud-hk.com
turn listen a
turn public-ip 1.2.3.4
turn enable

From the web user interface, you can enter the details under "TURN Server settings". TURN Server Address (Server) is the intenal server IP address that the Call Bridge will use to access the TURN server. TURN Server Address (Clients) is the public IP address assigned to the TURN server that external clients will use to access the TURN server.

6. Finally you can enable the webbridge module on Edge, it will allow internal and external participants to join a meeting with their WebRTC capable browser.

First of all, certificate again.

CMS Edge:
pki csr webbridge CN:webbridge.xcloud-hk.com
pki selfsigned webbridge

Copy your core CallBridge certificate to Edge, your webbridge service needs to trust your callbridge cert. Then config the webbridge parameters:
webbridge listen a
webbridge certs webbridge.key webbridge.crt
webbridge trust callbridge.crt
webbridge http-redirect enable
webbridge enable

After configured, you can type "webbridge" to check your configured parameters.

Go to Configuration > General, enter your Guest account client URI, for example https://webbridge.xcloud-hk.com. The Guest Account JID domain is your domain, in my case it is xcloud-hk.com

Depends on your DNS settings, you might need a few static entries on your edge, to resolve the xmpp SRV to your local loadbalancer FQDN.

dns add rr "loadbalancer.xcloud-hk.com. IN A 10.1.90.124"
dns add rr "_xmpp-server._tcp.xcloud-hk.com. 86400 IN SRV 0 5 5269 loadbalancer.xcloud-hk.com."
dns add rr "_xmpp-client_tcp.xcloud-hk.com. 86400 IN SRV 0 5 5222 loadbalancer.xcloud-hk.com."

After all these steps, you should be able to use webbridge to join a meeting with WebRTC.

In summary, we have covered the integration between core and edge in a single split deployment, and we can enable a few service modules on edge including SIP Edge, TURN and WebBridge, for different call scenarios especially for B2B calls.

Part 1 - Making your first call to CMS
Part 2 - XMPP and CMA
Part 3 - Integrating Core and Edge

Cisco Meeting Server (CMS) Part 2 - XMPP and CMA

2016-09-14T15:11:00.001+08:00

Part 1 - Making your first call to CMS
Part 2 - XMPP and CMA
Part 3 - Integrating Core and Edge

In our previous post - Part 1 (http://pandaeatsbamboo.blogspot.hk/2016/08/making-your-first-call-to-cisco-meeting.html), we have set up the basics of CMS, and making our first call to CMS Space, as well as allowing multiparty video conference with CMS. Now let's do something else. XMPP is a service module that is running on CMS Core, one of its function is to allow Cisco Meeting App (CMA) to login and be one of the soft client running on PC / Mac / mobile devices. We are going to go through a few steps and at the end of this post, you will be able to login your CMA and start to make calls.

Setting up XMPP in CMS Core

1. If you want to create a csr for your CA to sign, you can use the pki csr command. In my lab I am using self sign cert to make it simple.

pki selfsigned xmpp

2. Configure xmpp interface, certs and domain.

xmpp listen a
xmpp certs xmpp.key xmpp.crt
xmpp domain uc.xcloud-hk.com
xmpp enable

You can check your configuration with the command xmpp status, or simply xmpp.

3. Add Callbridge to your XMPP. You can give your callbridge a name / tag, it doesn't necessary the hostname / FQDN of your callbridge.

xmpp callbridge add cms

Remember the name of your callbridge that was entered and the secret. If you forgot that, you can use this command to check.

xmpp callbridge list

4. Switch back to the web interface, under Configuration > General, under XMPP server settings, enter the domain, server address, call bridge name and secret that you have got from step #3.

5. Make sure you have the DNS A and SRV records are created in your internal DNS.

In my lab it is a Windows one.

Host record of my CMS core:

SRV record (_xmpp-client, _xmpp-server):

6. AD integration. There is no option to create local users on CMS, this is my lab AD information that I've put in the CMS UI.

7. Get your Cisco Meeting App (CMA) from Cisco.com if you are testing with your Windows / Mac. For mobile app you can download it from iTunes store / Google Play Store for free.

Sign in with your AD credential. The format of the username will be username@domain

This is what you should expect after logging in:

After these steps, you are now able to login and use CMA as your client for calls.

Part 1 - Making your first call to CMS
Part 2 - XMPP and CMA
Part 3 - Integrating Core and Edge

Cisco Meeting Server (CMS) Part 1 - Making your first call to CMS

2016-08-31T16:26:00.003+08:00

Part 1 - Making your first call to CMS
Part 2 - XMPP and CMA
Part 3 - Integrating Core and Edge

Cisco has rebranded the Acano solution to Cisco Meeting Server (CMS), and this post is target to help you to set basic things up and make your first call to a CMS Space and CMS IVR.

1. First of all, deploy your CMS ova with vCenter.

2. It will spend around 10-15 minutes for the first time boot up.

3. Login via CLI. Default credential is admin/admin. You are required to change your CMS admin password for the first time login.

4. You can check your interface configuration with the command "ipv4 a". By default DHCP is enabled.

Set your static IP address with the command "ipv4 a add 10.1.90.123/24 10.1.90.254", in my case 10.1.90.123 is the IP address of my CMS, 10.1.90.254 is the default gateway.

Check your interface configuration again with the command "ipv4 a".

5. You can config your DNS server settings with the command "dns add forwardzone . 10.1.90.10", which will forward all the DNS query (. means all domain) to my DNS server 10.1.90.10.

Check your DNS configuration with the command "dns".

6. Create self-signed cert for HTTPS web admin with the command "pki selfsigned webadmin". In this case webadmin will be the filename of your self-signed cert.

7. Config web admin interface access.

webadmin certs webadmin.key webadmin.crt
webadmin listen a 443
webadmin restart
webadmin enable

Try to access your web admin page:

Login with your admin credential:

You will see there is a warning saying that CMS is running in evaluation mode as no license is installed.

8. If you are going to enable WebBridge (accessible by the WebRTC client), we have to change the web admin listening port from 443/tcp to something else, say for example 445/tcp.

webadmin disable
webadmin listen a 445
webadmin enable

9. Copy the license file to CMS via sFTP or SCP. In my case I used my mac built in sftp client and upload the file to CMS.

sftp admin@10.1.90.123
put cms.lic

10. Enable and config CallBridge, which is the core components for all the audio and video call terminations.

pki selfsigned callbridge
callbridge certs callbridge.key callbridge.crt
callbridge listen a
callbridge restart

11. Login the admin page again, you should seen something similar to mine below.

12. Enable IVR, in my case my IVR number is 8224, so when you make a call to 8224, you will see the default Cisco background and listen to the default IVR prompt. The IVR number can be configured in Configuration > General > IVR Numeric ID.

13. You can also create your Space to call in, so that you don't need to key in any Call ID by calling the IVR, by directly calling to the Space.

14. You will need to create your SIP trunk on UCM, pointing to CMS. In my case it is a lab environment and I am using a non-secure setting so I don't need to deal with the certs.

The destination address is your CMS address. You will need to choose the Telepresence Conferencing SIP Profile. No Normalization Script is required.

Extracted from the guide:

15. Config your route pattern. In my case my pattern is 822[45].

Try to place your test call. You should now able to call your IVR number (8224 in my case) and Space number (8225 in my case) from your UCM-registered devices.

Part 1 - Making your first call to CMS
Part 2 - XMPP and CMA
Part 3 - Integrating Core and Edge

Using Scratch to control Raspberry Pi GPIO

2016-07-29T15:30:00.004+08:00

In the previous post, I have built my first circuit and able to control the LED light using the gpio command:
http://pandaeatsbamboo.blogspot.hk/2016/07/the-hello-world-circuit-with-raspberry.html

Similar control can be done via Scratch, this is the official tutorial:
https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/a-new-version-of-scratch-for-raspberry-pi-now-with-added-gpio/

This is a super simple Scratch script to illustrate this:

In this simple script, when you click the flag icon, it will set the gpio pin 17 (BCM) to 1 to switch on the LED. When you press the spacebar on your keyboard, it will set the gpio pin 17 to 0 to switch off the LED. With this you can incorporate the GPIO control into your own scratch script. Give it a try!

The "Hello World" circuit with Raspberry - Single LED

2016-07-26T15:17:00.000+08:00

Probably the "Hello World" of building a simple circuit with Raspberry is a single LED circuit. So I decided to give it a try. Not difficult frankly speaking, just to get all the ingredients together and there are plenty of goods tutorial if you spend a minute to google.

This is the official URL that you can first check it out:
https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/usage/gpio-plus-and-raspi2/

The circuit that I've used is exactly the same as the one you can find from the above URL, except that the "switch" is not a physical one, I used the gpio command to control it.

This is how it looks physically. I've connected the GPIO pin to my breadboard using the female-to-male jumper cable. Physical pin 11 is used for +ve and physical pin 6 is the ground pin.

Check out this link about breadboard. An other things about building a circuit.

https://thepihut.com/blogs/raspberry-pi-tutorials/27968772-turning-on-an-led-with-your-raspberry-pis-gpio-pins

Some holes (usually the top and bottom rows) are connected in row and some (usually the middle) are in column.

I've followed this link and used a 330 ohm resistor. Check your LED spec to decide the correct resistor. My LED works fine in a 11mA current circuit so 330 ohm resistor is good for my case.

Also check out the above link for LED. The LED should have 2 legs, the longer leg is +ve and shorter leg is -ve.

One thing that I've spent quite some time is the pinout. The BCM and physical board pin numbering is a bit confusing. Say for my case, I've used physical pin 11, and in BCM numbering it is pin 17. It will spend you hours to troubleshoot if you don't get it right.

You can use the gpio readall command to print out all its number convention and other details.

Another thing is, your physical GPIO pin 11 will be providing 3.3V power and you have to change its mode to OUT. You can do it with the gpio command below:

gpio -1 means you are referring to the physical pinout numbering.

gpio -g means you are referring to the BCM pinout numbering.

This is a python script to switch on then off the LED light instead of using the gpio command. You can find a similar script from the link provided above. The only difference here is I am using GPIO.BOARD which means I'm referring to the physical pin number 11.

If you want to use the BCM numbering, then you can setmode to GPIO.BCM

Hope it will save you some time from troubleshooting layer 1 problem and to build up your first circuit with Raspberry!

Raspberry Pi Cam + Cisco Spark - Motion Detection Demo

2016-07-14T21:14:00.002+08:00

In the previous post, I've setup a Raspberry Pi Surveillance camera with Live streaming capability, and it can also save a video file when motion is detected.

http://pandaeatsbamboo.blogspot.com/2016/07/live-streaming-video-from-raspberry-pi.html

Spark integration is done too so that when motion is detected, a Spark message is posted with video files. This is how it works:

Live streaming video from the Raspberry Pi with Camera v2

2016-07-14T17:42:00.000+08:00

Just got my Raspberry Pi Camera v2, cannot wait to unbox and play with it.

I didn't get a good case to fit in the camera module, but it works. :)

First of all you can start by taking a picture to make sure your camera is working fine:

raspistill -o image.jpg

To capture your first video, you can use the command raspivid:

raspivid -o video.h264

The video is in raw h.264 format. It is fine to be played back by my omxplayer on the Raspberry, however if you want most of the other video players to play it, it will be better to convert the file into mp4.

sudo apt-get install gpac
MP4Box -fps 30 -add video.h264 video.mp4

For some application such as "motion", the motion detection and video streaming applications, it needs to recognised the video device as /dev/video0. It is not the case by default for the Pi Camera.

To enable that, you need to run:

sudo modprobe bcm2835-v4l2

You can also put this command in /etc/rc.local so that the next reboot it will run automatically.

Motion is an open source motion detection and surveillance software which can help you to convert your Raspberry Pi into a home surveillance camera. To start with, you can get the motion package:

sudo apt-get install motion

A few parameters under motion.conf that you can change, such as:

daemon on

which makes the motion run in background when you start the motion server.

You can also change the resolution in the conf file:
width 1280
height 720

change the following parameter to off so that you can access from host other than localhost:
stream_localhost off
webcontrol_localhost off

You can now access the stream via http::8081

And you will get a bunch of files in your home directory, make sure you have enough storage, if not probably you might need to do it off box to a NAS or whatever it is. These files are created when motion is detected.

These are the links that I've used to aid my setup, listing all here for your reference:
http://www.instructables.com/id/Raspberry-Pi-as-low-cost-HD-surveillance-camera/?ALLSTEPS
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/raspberry-pi-camera-module/
http://www.raspberrypi-spy.co.uk/2013/05/capturing-hd-video-with-the-pi-camera-module/

Expressway 8.8 registration - in action

2016-07-13T16:24:00.000+08:00

In the previous post I've shared that the latest Expressway 8.8 supports endpoint registration:
http://pandaeatsbamboo.blogspot.com/2016/07/expressway-88-video-endpoint.html

I want to give it a try therefore I have upgraded my lab Expressway C to the latest version 8.8. First of all there is a getting started wizard, and it will let you decide what role the Expressway will play and it will customize the UI accordingly and hide those that are not needed.

New license types are introduced (Room systems, Desktop systems), and it aligns with the UCM licensing model. You will need UCL Enhanced / CUWL for desktop systems, and Telepresence room system license for Room systems.

I've some difficulties in using the endpoint activation wizard to register it to Expressway. However it works well when I manually do it on the codec web admin page. Under SIP configuration:

It is now registered, it can be seen from the codec admin page:

From the Expressway admin page:

This is how it looks on the DX70 itself:

Using Web and Cisco Spark to control a Lego EV3 Robot

2016-07-10T23:45:00.000+08:00

I have bought the Lego Mindstorms EV3 robot for more than 2 years, however I didn't spend any time on it until recently. My daughter was sick and she has to stay at home, to keep her busy I built the EV3 together with her and we had run some pre-set missions to make the robot move and did some simple tasks. It works great, except that I have to use the Mindstorm software to program it.

There is also another iPhone app to give you basic control of your robot, however it only accepts bluetooth connection, which makes me a lot less flexible compare with Wifi.

I have done some googling and find this post:
http://programmablebrick.blogspot.hk/2014/11/seanbot-ev3-robot-controlled-via-web.html

It looks interesting to me and I would want to make it my first EV3 project. This is what I've done:

1. Get an microSD card. So happen I've found one old 2GB card at home and I've used that for this project. Flash it with the ev3dev OS following the instruction in this page, it is based on Debian Linux:
http://www.ev3dev.org/docs/getting-started/

2. Putting the microSD card into my EV3 and power it on. It will not affect your original firmware in EV3, it is just like dual booting another OS.

3. Setting up the wireless network. I've bought a wireless USB dongle from a local computer store, and it is less than US$9. It works like a charm. I did purposely pick one without 802.11ac, older model, claim to have Linux support. Just bet on it, provided that it is so cheap.

4. Plug that into the USB port of EV3. Use the screen on EV3 to choose my home wifi network, and entered the WPA PSK. It is now connected, and able to access the Internet.

5. SSH to the box. Use apt-get to get the packages, make sure you did a apt-get upgrade and update before you download the other packages.

sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get install apache2 libapache2-mod-php5 unzip

6. Download the files in zip in this github project - https://github.com/dwalton76/LegoEV3D4. Unzip and copy these contents into your apache document root, in my case it is /var/www/html. I download it to my Mac and then scp to the EV3, unzip it then copy it to the document root.

7. Install the python-ev3 on EV3 - https://github.com/topikachu/python-ev3. My version of python is 2.7, therefore these are the commands that I've issued to my EV3.

Python 2.7

apt-get update
apt-get install virtualenv virtualenvwrapper python-setuptools python-smbus python-pil
source /etc/bash_completion.d/virtualenvwrapper
mkvirtualenv ev3_py27 --python=/usr/bin/python2.7 --system-site-packages
workon ev3_py27
easy_install -U python-ev3
type deactive to exit

8. Download the python-ev3 project in zip file - https://github.com/topikachu/python-ev3. Similar to step 6, copy the content to the EV3. In python-ev3, there is a ev3 folder. Make sure this folder is copied to /var/www/html. You will need to make sure you do this otherwise your LegoR2D2.py will not work.

9. Some python libraries dependencies need to be resolved, and this is what I've done:
easy_install web.py

10. Start your apache using the command /etc/init.d/apache2 start. Run the LegoR2D2 python scripts with sudo. tcp/8080 will be listened after you run the script.

11. Launch your web browser. I have tried Chrome and Firefox, for some reasons it only works on my Firefox, probably it is something specific to my laptop. By the way this is what you will see:

12. Click on the arrows to move your robot! Is that it? No! How about we using a Cisco Spark Chatbot to control the EV3?

Raspberry Pi 3 + Cisco Spark - My home presence check

2016-07-08T22:42:00.001+08:00

Just got my Raspberry Pi 3 a few days ago. I know there are loads of projects that I can do with that, before knowing what I actually want to do, I want to try something quick and simple to keep the box warm. I've an python scripts based on the post here:

http://www.instructables.com/id/Raspberry-Pi-Bluetooth-InOut-Board-or-Whos-Hom/

I modified it slightly to send a message to a Spark room when the Raspberry Pi detects my iPhone bluetooth mac address:

#!/usr/bin/python

import bluetooth
import time
import pyCiscoSpark

print "Home Attendance"

accesstoken="Bearer "
roomid=""

while True:
currenttime=time.strftime("%a, %d %b %Y %H:%M:%S", time.localtime())
print "Checking " + currenttime

result = bluetooth.lookup_name('ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff', timeout=5)
if (result != None):
print "Danny: in"
resp_dict = pyCiscoSpark.post_message(accesstoken,roomid,"BT: Danny is at home now - " + currenttime)
#print (resp_dict)
else:
print "Danny: out"
resp_dict = pyCiscoSpark.post_message(accesstoken,roomid,"BT: Danny is NOT at home now - " + currenttime)

time.sleep(60)

Replace ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff with your phone Bluetooth mac address. I've also used the pyCiscoSpark.py in Github for posting a message to the Spark room:

https://github.com/brbester/pyCiscoSpark

So this is how it looks like when the script is running:

Spark room:

Precision 60 camera - Support SX20?

2016-07-06T12:42:00.000+08:00

Precision 60 camera is a nice camera with good horizontal FoV:
http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/collaboration-endpoints/telepresence-precision-cameras/datasheet-c78-734009.html

It is the widest FoV (80 degree) after the x2.5 camera has announced end of sales. However it only support SX80, but NOT mid-range SX20. So if you want to have a good horizontal FoV in a small room, you can either choose SX80 + P60, or MX200G2, because MX200G2 is using the 2.5x camera with 83 degree horizontal PoV.

MX200G2 datasheet:

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/collaboration-endpoints/telepresence-mx-series/data-sheet-c78-729734.html

Clearing CAPWAP AP config

2016-07-06T12:32:00.000+08:00

Got multiple disks failure in my lab yesterday and fortunately not a lot of crucial VMs are affected. One of those is the vWLC that I've used for my home AP. As I've configured FlexConnect, the AP still works fine without the presence of the controller, however I still want to fix it otherwise I can't make changes in the future.

After rebuilding the vWLC with the same IP address, the AP failed to register to the new vWLC.

*Jul 5 10:56:02.000: %CAPWAP-5-DTLSREQSEND: DTLS connection request sent peer_ip: 192.168.24.70 peer_port: 5246
*Jul 5 10:56:02.015: %CAPWAP-1-SSC_CERT_AUTH_FAILED: Failed to authorize controller, SSC certificate validation failed.Peer certificate verification failed FFFFFFFF
*Jul 5 10:56:02.015: DTLS_CLIENT_ERROR: ../capwap/base_capwap/capwap/base_capwap_wtp_dtls.c:509 Certificate verified failed!
*Jul 5 10:56:02.015: %DTLS-5-SEND_ALERT: Send FATAL : Bad certificate Alert to 192.168.24.70:5246
*Jul 5 10:56:02.015: %DTLS-5-SEND_ALERT: Send FATAL : Close notify Alert to 192.168.24.70:5246

It didn't look right to me, and after trying a few things, this error didn't go away. So what I have to do is to remove write erase the AP. You can do it from console or telnet, if telnet is enabled. I have got telnet enabled so I telnet to my AP, and use the following commands:

! This command is the most important, without this you can't use the clear capwap commands
debug capwap console cli

then

clear capwap private-config

Or you can also simply write erase the AP. After that, configure option 43 hex in the dhcp pool. I've only one controller so the prefix to add is f104, follows by the hex of my controller IP address 192.168.24.70.

option 43 hex f104.c0a8.1846

Too lazy to convert it manually, I just used the calculator here:

http://networkguy.de/?page_id=903

And now all works great! Everything back to normal!

SX10 - H.323 Support in CE8.2

2016-07-04T18:00:00.000+08:00

Besides expanding portfolio supports in Cisco Spark room services (check here), another added feature in CE8.2 is the SX10 H.323 support. Previously SX10 only supports SIP for registration, in CE8.2 it supports H.323 as well so now in line with the rest of the video endpoints.

CE8.2 - Cisco Spark on-boarding

2016-07-04T17:55:00.002+08:00

SX10N is the first endpoint that is supported to register to Cisco Spark cloud service. Starting from CE8.2, all the remaining SX, MX and DX endpoints are supported to register to Cisco Spark cloud. There are some considerations that you need to take if you want to register the endpoints to the Spark cloud. According to the release notes:
http://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en/us/td/docs/telepresence/endpoint/software/ce8/release-notes/ce-software-release-notes-ce8.pdf

So it means that SX10 and SX20 are supported only when using TRC6 remote, but not Touch 10. On SX80 only directing pairing of Touch 10 is supported, but not network pairing. This is something that people will possibly miss out if not reading the release notes carefully.

Follow up - LDAP search features on UCM 11.5

2016-07-04T17:31:00.001+08:00

In the previous post, I've tested the new LDAP search (LDAP-UDS proxy) features on UCM 11.5:

http://pandaeatsbamboo.blogspot.com/2016/06/new-ldap-search-function-in-ucm-115.html

In my test, this new features only work for those video endpoints such as DX, but not IP phones such as 8861, 7975 and 9971 that were hooked up to my lab UCM. It was confirmed that the devices that support the UDS API search will support this feature, in the case of IP phones such as 8861, it is using CCMCIP and not UDS and that's why it doesn't work. So to summarize:

Devices that support the UDS API such as DX:
- when I do an user search, it will use the UCM as an UDS proxy to query the LDAP servers, and will return the results from the LDAP servers. No UCM local users will be searched.

Devices that do not support the UDS API, and using CCMCIP, such as 8861 IP phones
- when I do a corporate directory search, it will return the UCM local database, it could be a mix of LDAP synchronized users and UCM local users depends on the actual environment. UCM will return the result instead of proxy the requests to the LDAP server at the backend.

UCM User facing features when publisher is down

2016-07-04T17:23:00.000+08:00

Starting from UCM 6.0, the User facing features (such as CFA, hunt login / logout, extension mobility, DND, etc) can be changed while the publisher is down. However you can only make the changes from the phone, but NOT the UCM admin page or UCM user page.

Take CFA as an example. When the publisher is down, users can update CFA on their phones, but not from the CCM user portal. Admin can't change it from the CCMAdmin page too. All web based UCM admin and user updates must be done on the publisher.

Although the above is the expected behaviour, in my lab I can configure CFA for my phone on the self-service portal (CCMUser page) when the publisher is down. However I can't cancel the CFA from the web self-service portal. Hope this is only an issue specific to my lab as it doesn't make any sense to me. The CFA activate and cancel works perfectly on the phone though, while the pub is down.

Expressway 8.8 - Video Endpoint registration

2016-07-03T01:19:00.000+08:00

This is something that catches my attention in the release notes. In the previous release, one of the major difference between VCS and Expressway is the ability to register video endpoints. While VCS allows endpoint registrations, Expressway works together with UCM and all the endpoints are registered to UCM as single call control. For UCM centric customers with 3rd party video endpoints, they will need to deploy a pair of VCS just for 3rd party video endpoints registration.

Now with Expressway 8.8, it allows endpoint registrations, which means you can have your DX, SX and MX endpoints register directly to Expressway. It also allows 3rd party endpoint registration, however for this release, only SIP endpoints are supported. H323 will be supported in future releases.

The licensing model for Expressway registrations will follow the UCM UCL / CUWL / Telepresence room systems licensing, instead of the VCS way. It allows you to starts small with relatively less investment. It also makes it easier for existing UCM customers to understand this new licensing model on Expressway.

Can you run Expressway alone without UCM for video centric deployment? Technically you can, however you will lose advance UCM capability such as Jabber, Extension Mobility, SNR, Shared Line, Multiline, VM/UM, etc. If you want to have these capabilities in your environment, registering these endpoints to the UCM is suggested, with Expressway as your collaboration edge for B2B, MRA, CMR Cloud, etc.

Release notes:
http://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en/us/td/docs/voice_ip_comm/expressway/release_note/Cisco-Expressway-Release-Note-X8-8.pdf

Page 22:

Page 70:

Related post:
Collaboration Edge - Step-by-Step integration guide with UCM:
http://pandaeatsbamboo.blogspot.com/2014/06/collaboration-edge-expressway-step-by.html

New Wireless phone 8821 is now available

2016-07-01T21:26:00.001+08:00

After a prolonged wait, the next generation of 7925 is released. A few things noted from the datasheet, including hardened design with IP67 and MIL-STD-810G compliant, security enhancement by supporting SHA2 and SCEP, and better wireless radio by supporting 11ac.

8821 datasheet:
http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/collaboration-endpoints/wireless-ip-phone-8821/datasheet-c78-737346.html?cachemode=refresh

8821-EX datasheet:
http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/collaboration-endpoints/wireless-ip-phone-8821-ex/datasheet-c78-737347.html?cachemode=refresh

Warning: Less than a month to order add-on UCM licenses

2016-07-01T21:15:00.003+08:00

Check this out, all of the version before 8.6 will be end of sale its add on license options which means you are not able to order add on license after 31 Jul 2016
https://communities.cisco.com/docs/DOC-57172

CSR 11.5 documentation is now live!

2016-07-01T21:11:00.001+08:00

Documents are all here:
http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/unified-communications/collaboration-systems-release-11-5/model.html

Updated Compatibility matrix
http://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en/us/td/docs/voice_ip_comm/uc_system/unified/communications/system/Compatibility/CSR-Compatibility-Matrix-InteractiveHTML.html

Facebook page

2016-06-30T23:07:00.001+08:00

One more channel to share and engage:

https://www.facebook.com/Panda-Eats-Bamboo-1404693529544647/

Getting Surveillance Camera Snapshot with Spark Chatbot

2016-06-30T21:36:00.000+08:00

Bear with me if it is just too much. I am developing different use cases with Spark that might be useful for myself. Yesterday I had posted these two use cases:

Device monitoring:
http://pandaeatsbamboo.blogspot.hk/2016/06/using-spark-to-monitor-device.html

Config backup:
http://pandaeatsbamboo.blogspot.hk/2016/06/using-spark-for-my-routers-and-switches.html

Another use case is I can ask the chatbot to send my home surveillance camera snapshot to me via Spark. In a lot of time I don't need the live video as it consumes cellular bandwidth. A snapshot is usually work to get a feeling what my children are doing at home.

Previous use cases:
Network monitoring - http://pandaeatsbamboo.blogspot.com/2016/06/using-spark-to-monitor-device.html
Config backup - http://pandaeatsbamboo.blogspot.com/2016/06/using-spark-for-my-routers-and-switches.html
Energywise demo with bot - http://pandaeatsbamboo.blogspot.com/2016/06/cisco-spark-bot-energywise-demo.html