If something is worth doing, then it's worth overdoing, right? Right? I like our garage gym setup but I couldn't really see what I was doing. It might not help me to see what I'm doing, but it would be nice to try. lol. With the window directly in front of me and no good place to store a movable mirror it seemed like a good time to try something silly. There was room for a TV on the wall. Maybe I could just mount a TV under the window and hook it up to a camera? I'd have to look down (spoiler: or not), but that wouldn't be too bad. Hey, what if I hooked it up to 2 cameras (spoiler: or 3)? Then I could choose between a front or a side view. That would be cool. A mirror couldn't do that. Take that stupid mirror! A chance to do something ridiculous? I was sold.
The following has me squatting 295 pounds simultaneously recorded from three different perspectives. I'm far from perfect but being able to see this, slow it down and pick out a thing(s) to focus on can be really helpful. I knew that last rep took me right to the edge, but until I saw this I hadn't realized that my right knee took a dive to the inside. Now the next time I'm struggling to get the last rep out I can watch for it and try to be better.
Step 1:
First I had to take apart everything that I've done and start over. Not really, but sort of. The home made rack needed to come apart to make more space. The TV and stand was going to take about 8 inches or so. I needed to make room so I took everything apart and then added 7 inches to the brackets. That plus stealing another 1 1/2 inches from the 2x4's that were on the wall would give me roughly a net zero change for workable depth between the rack and the wall/TV in front of me.
Step 2:
The 4x4's that are sticking out from the wall? That was the entire reason that the rack was taken apart. They used to be 14 inches long. Now they are 21 inches long. Oh, and thanks to my neighbor John and a discontinued
Motorized TV Lift the ridiculous got even more silly. Yes, that's right I would no longer need to look down when I was lifting weights because the position of the TV would now be adjustable with the push of a button. When I needed to see what I was doing it would rise up and block the window. When I wasn't using the TV it could now be lowered so that it wouldn't obstruct the view outside.
I really like having the lift, but I do have one complaint. They claim it is for 30-50 inch TVs and it really isn't. The lift itself can handle a bigger TV but the mounting bracket to attach the TV to the lift is way too small. After messing around with it, I decided that it really only needed to be attached with 2 screws instead of 4 and I doubt I'll ever have a problem. It is amazing how light a 50 inch TV is these days. I doubt it weighs much more than 10 pounds, 15 at the most.
Here is a view from the top that shows no inch was left unused. The 2x4 blocking on the wall was cut and the channel for the TV lift was spliced into the middle.
Step 3:
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| Rack reassembled waiting for cameras |
Plug everything in, tell the TV how to connect to WiFi and watch it come to life. I didn't have the cameras yet so the test run was playing the Pandora Roku Channel. Oh, and one of the enablers to this entire project? Black Friday. I didn't commit to actually following through on all of this until after I'd scored the 50 inch TV for $128, also from Walmart.
Disclaimer: The video on the left is playing at 4x normal speed. In reality it takes about 30 seconds for the TV to travel from bottom to top.
Step 4:
The cameras have arrived. Twice. This is where things start to get painful.
I thought it would be easy to find an IP camera that I could connect to from the TV. The problem is that the marketing lingo makes it really hard to decipher what the cameras can really do. IP camera technology has been around forever. It is a bit like saying you want to buy a TV that can play movies from a DVD player. Ok, maybe not quite that antique but it really is a "lowest common denominator" kind of technology, or at least I thought it was. I was wrong. My first attempt was the TETHYS Wireless Security Camera. It was cheap. It seemed to have a lot of functionality. Why not? Well, because the description said this, "(NOTE: HTTP/RTSP NOT SUPPORTED)"...that's why not. Let's just say that in retrospect that was a tip off that it wouldn't support doing things in an open, easy to reuse without being forced into their software sort of way. Oops.
After this first attempt failed, I rolled the dice and gave the Foscam Security Camera WiFi IP Home Camera - R2C model a try. Why this one? It was in the lengthy list of cameras supported by the IP Camera Viewer app that is available on Roku. Duh. I should have thought to try that the first time.
With 2 cameras to deploy it seemed that the classic "front" view that I'd get with that ancient mirror technology would be the first choice and then a second camera deployed from the side would help me know if I was getting deep enough on squats and check my back position for deadlifts. The picture below has the cameras circled.
Step 5:
I built a small platform that is attached to the top of the TV. The reason for the platform is that it would give me the ability to reposition the camera for different lifts easily. Both cameras are mounted with the included bracket, but the trick here is that I did NOT mount the bracket directly to the platform. I mounted the bracket to a couple of super strong magnets. The magnets are then attracted to screws in the platform. One last tip when mounting the cameras is to get them into position without using the software app that lets you pan/tilt/zoom the camera. The reason? Any time the camera loses power it goes into an R2D2 whirly, twirly move where it looks all around and then returns the camera to a standard "home" position. By using the bracket to position the camera as wanted while in the "home" position I don't have to worry about things getting out of whack every time there is a brief power outage.
I feel like the picture to the left shows off a nice piece of low tech innovation. Those silver circles at the base of the camera are the magnets I mentioned earlier. The 6 screws with pencil circles around them to the far right? That is the 2nd standard position for the camera. When I'm doing squats and my body is centered in front of the TV the camera is as pictured here. When I'm doing deadlifts I tend to setup off center. The screws/pencil circles are a second position that puts the camera directly in front of me when I am doing deadlifts. The screws provide enough metal to keep the magnets attracted and the camera firmly in place. The pencil circles help me know that I have the camera facing forward.
Step 6:
The side view camera was even easier to mount. I attached it to magnets, like the front view camera, and took advantage of the fact that the metal circuit breaker box in the garage happens to be directly to my left. Easy peasy.
Step 7:
Great. A bunch of hardware has been bought and put into place. So what. None of it can talk to each other. The glue that makes all of the hardware work is a bit of software called IP Camera Viewer. Fortunately there is a free version of the app and a "pro" version for the big investment of $5. After all, with hundreds of dollars invested in various hardware the last thing I wanted to do was risk $5 if the software wasn't going to work. It turns out that the software did work to bring it all together so I went ahead and sprung for the "pro" version. This software really is a big deal. There aren't many apps available in the Roku store. Without this one, nothing comes together. There isn't a workable alternative without going really deep into the rabbit hole.
Step 8:
Time to add the first camera.
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| These are my values. If you try this yours will be different. |
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| Boom! My ugly mug on the TV. #winning |
Step 9:
Now time for camera number 2...
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| Magic values part 2...now for the camera named "Side" |
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| The main value of spending $5 on the "pro" version of the software is that I can display multiple cameras on screen at the same time. It is a feature that I don't use as often as I thought I would, but frankly I'm glad to have given the software guy $5 for helping me pull all of this together. |
Step 10:
For anyone that has made it this far, thanks! You are awesome and I hope it has been helpful. For the rest of you, well, I guess you'll never know what I really think of you. :-P
Back at the beginning of this post you may remember seeing 3 views of me doing a set of squats. There was one each for front, side and back. Front and Side were configured above using the Foscam security cameras but what about Back?
One mild disappointment that I've had with this setup is that the Foscam security cameras come with wide angle lenses, just like every other security camera would. The impact on me is that it gives a curved look to the video. I've gotten used to it, but when other people try to use this setup it can be disorienting when you are trying to judge your left/right balance and the bar on your back starts to look a little curved at the ends.
One day when I was panting after trying to lift too much weight a thought occurred to me, "I bet there are free apps that turn old cell phones into IP cameras and a cell phone would likely have better optics." 6 seconds of searching with Google and I had a simple set of instructions to make it so. I have a drawer full of old cell phones that I could have used for this project. Oops. I guess it is better late than never.
The science experiment continued because I wanted to see just how easy it would be to make the free IP Phone Camera app on my phone take the place of $45 Foscam cameras.
Install the IP Phone Camera app and once you open it up click on the WiFi banner/button at the top of the list.
Step 11:
Use the IP Address:Port in the URL box to connect the TV to the camera. This was more obvious than figuring out the Foscam settings but it is also a journey deeper into the dark corners of tech than most people would be interested in knowing so
I hid those details in a post of it's own here. |
Not the same magic values as Foscam, but it was something similar. The biggest difference is the Stream URL value, but the IP and TCP Port will be different too.
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Now that everything has been stitched together we can have some fun trying to break the borders of space and time by pointing the camera at me with the TV in the background to show an embedded image of the camera pointing at me with a TV in the background to show....an infinite loop of geekdom.
For those of you paying close attention, the animated GIFs at the beginning of this post have a cameo of my wife Amanda holding the cell phone to get the view of my lift from the back. That is her on the right side of this picture which was taken from the "Side" Foscam camera that is mounted on the circuit breaker panel. If I ever want to see what I'm doing from her perspective I just need to bring up the camera named "Cell Phone" on the IP Camera Viewer app on the TV.
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The view from the camera named "Cell Phone" while the camera
named "Side" displays on the TV. |
That's everything I've got to share. If anyone out there decides to give something like this a try and runs into trouble just give me a shout directly, or in the comments below and I'll do what I can to help. In retrospect it was a fun little project to pass the time but when I was going through it there was plenty of head scratching and frustration that would have been reduced if I only knew then what I know now.
Plug everything in, tell the TV how to connect to WiFi and watch it come to life. I didn't have the cameras yet so the test run was playing the Pandora Roku Channel. Oh, and one of the enablers to this entire project? Black Friday. I didn't commit to actually following through on all of this until after I'd scored the 50 inch TV for $128, also from Walmart. Disclaimer: The video on the left is playing at 4x normal speed. In reality it takes about 30 seconds for the TV to travel from bottom to top.
