Uniden Bearcat BC296D LIPO/lithium ion battery mod

For many years I have been trying to find a solution to the atrocious BC296D Uniden battery pack (BP120 / BP150 / BP180 / BP250). Other battery packs that held normal AA batteries would not fit. The garbage nicad/nimh battery tech made replacing the rechargeable batteries with something better (like Lithium ion) difficult. single cell lion bats put out a voltage of only 4.2v max, lower than the low battery voltage of a nicad battery pack.

most lion/lipo battery chargers only charged the battery and did not have an output voltage connection AND also would not fit inside the battery compartment. They would also require some kind of boost converter (taking up more space). The boost converter would increase the output voltage of the battery to at least 6vdc

Recently my intermittent (but relentless) searching finally found a combination of components that would fit in the compartment WITH a battery that was the same mah or higher than the nicad packs AND would have a service life longer than nicad/nimh.

for this mod you will need:
1 - J5019 combination 1S single battery charger/boost converter with built in BMS.

1 - LIPO battery pack measuring 10mm X 40mm X 50mm (thickness x length x width) or some type of lithium ion battery that will fit in the compartment with the other components and be of sufficient mah. the lipo or 18650 must have a protection circuit. most lipos do, 18650s usually do not.

1 - DC barrel connector socket that will fit in the narrow confines of the side of the case.

1 - 5v-8v DC power supply.

The resolve to alter your scanner.

I found a DC socket that just fit, carefully measured everything and found a LIPO battery that was 2400mah that also just fit. The boost converter/battery charger fit perfectly as well.

I used 3M 100mph double sided tape to hold the battery in. the BMS has 2 LED's on it a red one for charging and a green one for charged. it has a tiny POT to adjust the output voltage. I set mine to 5.99 volts because it was finicky. I reused the old battery packs connector.

the board is held in with hot glue. the BMS can charge at up to 1 amp. You can run the scanner while it is charging. I have not noted any interference from the boost converter (yet).

You cannot use the original power plug with this mod.

Dell UPS 500W Charger Fault or battery disconnected

Dell UPS 500W reports a Charger Fault/failure or battery disconnected.

Pull the batteries out, take the plastic case off, disconnect the batteries from each other and check voltages. if any battery are 1 volt or more different from the others:

One battery reads between 12.5 to 13.1 volts and the other reads 11 volts or lower the lower reading battery may be bad. Try charging it on a 12 volt battery charger for an hour or 2 if it goes back to the original reading or quickly goes below 12 volts it is bad.

Replace both batteries batteries.

On the UPS clear the error if it does not clear itself. Press and hold the left arrow button, then go through the menu until you find the option to clear the error log and reset error condition.

QT428 System Initializing boots to nothing

I have a Q-see Qt428 it belongs to my brother. he reported that after a power surge it would not start up properly.

unit is 12 years old. I did some checking and found that every single capacitor on the board is bad. So I replaced them. same results won't fully start up.

tried a different power supply. same results. replaced HD no dice. after about 6 to 8 hours of searching the internet I stumbled on an ebay review that states the devices can be recovered by putting firmware on a USB stick and turning the unit on, the device would supposedly load the firmware. Problem is I don't have any firmware.

contacted the reviewer and had to play 20 questions, he pointed me at a supposed firmware file which when put on usb stick and placed in the unit, got accessed but did nothing more. I contacted "q-see" and have not yet heard back from them.

this device gave my googlefu a massive work out. I went on a wild goose chase for firmware (which ended up NOT being the problem).

Every single electrolytic capacitor in this device was bad, very high ESR to not even being seen by my capacitor testers. how it was working at all I do not know.

Before 

                                                                                   After

Replacing the capacitors did not change anything.

So in my searching I found little tidbits of information here, and there like:

this unit is the same as a TVT TD-2308SE which led me to TVT's site where I found GARBAGE instructions on how to access the linux OS on the unit through ye olde fashioned RS232 com port. the purpose of which was to upload firmware which their site had none of.

Now of course all my new computers don't have a COM ports so I had to dust off an old DELL laptop I keep for such instances. BUT the unit has a TTL com port and cannot directly interface with RS232. luckily I had a TTL to RS232 converter I got for another project.

of course there are no pinouts on the main board of this unit as to what is what. but I determined where +5v and ground were. 

 said a hail Mary and plugged it in. 

just friction fit and did not push it through all the way.

next I consulted the worthless TVT doc which had zero information on the what settings to use. It ended up being 115200bps n,8,1, software handshake.

as soon as I put that in to putty and connected I saw a prompt and something constantly repeating about there being no more space. I spent a good hour trying to follow the instructions to update the firmware with the supposed firmware that the ebay reviewer directed me to. It never worked.

after a crash course in linux commands (I'm a Windows and DOS guy) I went to plan B trying to fix the file system since it appeared the flash memory was full. I finally located a TMP folder and noticed a 490k file with a name (similar to) zxzycxwv or something like that (probably a random name). I deleted it, and the error message about no more space disappeared. I restarted the device and BOOM it started up normal and the only information lost was the time and date (dead CR2032) battery. 

Adobe Bridge CS5.1 not running correctly

Adobe Bridge CS5.1 opens runs for a bit says not responding and closes, or opens and closes immediately. application logs may have an Exception code: 0xc0000005.

Press Ctrl key when launching Bridge CS5.1. Once Reset Settings dialog appears select Reset Preferences and Purge Thumbnail Cache, then press OK button. I recommend disabling startup scripts in preferences when bridge runs.

Editing or removing security from a printable PDF

If you have a (secured) PDF and you want to copy text from it, perform OCR, or for whatever reason remove security, AND it can be printed. do the following:
Print the PDF with the Microsoft XPS Document Printer.
Open the .oxps document with XPS viewer.
Print the document as a PDF (if you have that capability).
document now unsecured. OCR or whatever.

There may be weird issues if there are watermarks.

microsoft edge hassles and problems

It appears that my microsoft edge was never upgrading since I got my computer. the problem appears to have  been that a zero length file named "temp" (with no security) in the folder C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft\Edge was causing the problem. added myself to the security (full control) and deleted it. ran the edge install and BAM I could update it. Edge installers and updaters were to retarded to tell me the exact folder name.

Then microsoft edge decided I needed to see ads and garbage on new tabs. I installed the add on/ extension Custom new Tab which edge immediately disabled. I then enabled it and set it to what I wanted. Then Edge decided that ALL attempts to open internet explorer would be redirected to edge I don't want that. the following fixed that issue.

You can stop Internet Explorer to Edge redirect by disabling the IEToEdge Browser Helper Object (BHO) from the registry editor. Here’s how.

1. Open the registry editor.
2. Paste the below path in the address bar and press Enter.
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Ext\CLSID
3. On the right panel, double-click on the “{1FD49718-1D00-4B19-AF5F-070AF6D5D54C}” value.
4. Change the Value Data from “1” to “0”.
5. Click on the “Ok” button.
6. Close the registry editor.

 all this for a browser I won't be using.

error messages I received when trying to update or install:

An error occurred while checking for updates: Check whether you have free disk space and permission to install software. We couldn't create a temporary directory. (error code 7: 0x80040902: 11 -- system level).

Check whether you have free disk space and permission to install software. We couldn't create a temporary directory.

Rsrteng DM-SCD405I5AP-V04-E IP PTZ camera RTSP stream not working with VLC

Rsrteng cameras are rebranded Huisun cameras. do not select english on the website, open in chrome and have it translate. If you select english you get a different website. Either way there are no useful downloads for this camera.
the rtsp stream URL for VLC is:
rtsp://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:554/PSIA/streaming/channels/101 

use your IP in place of the xxx's.

Issues with the cameras:

Will show your password sometimes when logging in from a browser (reboot camera to fix).

Unable to get NFS to work, unknown why no errors generated.

Be very careful handling the unit, very difficult to remove and install screws in cover over SD card. Can easily rotate and possibly mess up gears.

Iif you leave the video open in a tab and then go to another tab the video will stop and you have to click on something else and then back to live. click on sub then click back on live