Hardware – Seth's Blog

It seems that there’s an edge case with Windows 10, Google Chrome browser, and the built-in tab Chromecast functionality that causes debugging info to get displayed on the television you’re casting to. I found a thread on reddit from a few months ago where someone was having the same problem. It doesn’t seem to be wide spread, which sucks, because not even Google knew what to tell me.

The specific problem is that if you select a tab in Chrome to cast from, you will see a small print out of the frame rate, screen resolution, and a timer in the lower right hand corner of your TV, over the tab’s stream.

There’s no menu in Chrome to enable or disable this debug stream info from being displayed.

I noticed this a few days ago. As of this post I’m running Chrome version 75.0.3770.142 (Official Build) (64-bit), which isn’t special – surprisingly I got into a chat with Google Chromecast support very quickly. Unfortunately the tech I spoke with had NO clue how or why this was happening. After being told to talk to Vizio support (Google said it must be a Vizio firmware problem, not a Google problem…) we determined it’s neither.

I’m using Windows 10 Pro Insider Preview, version 10.0.18945 Build 18945. Something about the combination of Windows, Chrome, and television is causing this issue. Google had nothing useful to say after I told them Vizio said my television’s firmware hadn’t been updated since May, so it wasn’t them.

The issue only seems to happen in Windows. Casting a tab from Chrome running on my MacBook didn’t show the debug info.

It only seems to show up when you cast an entire tab – YouTube videos cast to the TV display as expected.

Anyway, I’ll update this post if anything about this annoying situation changes.

Blink XT Camera System Sync Module USB details

I wanted a simple home security camera system. Something brainless to set up and manage – enough to monitor the front gate of where I live, with some additional coverage for the back yard. After a lot of research I bought the Blink wireless, battery camera system – specifically the Blink XT Camera System, which are the cameras designed to be used outside.

I bought a pack of five cameras and two Blink sync modules.

Two sync modules were necessary because of the location of my wifi router and the distance between the cameras, the modules, and the router.

I won’t recap all the stats and specs, those are all on the Blink camera website, but in brief, I bought the system beacuse the Blink XT cameras are wireless, water and weather-proof, run on two lithium double batteries, and have a phone app with free video clip recording storage. It’s a simple approach to a home security system that should work for most use cases.

USB port on Blink Sync Module

The Blink sync module has a USB port on the side. Apparently it provides power out – the community portal has more discussion about it. The port is supposed to be for future, undefined capability. The sync module also has a microUSB port for the wall power charger. People have had success running the sync module off a battery or even a solar panel.

Anyway, I noticed that the Blink cameras also have a micro-USB port, and the documentation stated that the camera could be powered over USB. After some poking around, I got details on how this port can actually be used.

The USB port on the Blink XT camera conforms to the USB 2.0 specification. Specifically, the XT camera can run off 5 watts at 1 amp, up to 5 meters in USB cable length. Technically this is 16 feet and 5 inches maximum, but that might lead to power loss – and even though the XT camera is sealed up, using it with a cable outside negates the full weatherproofing because of the USB hole in the back cover has no rubber seal protecting it. Batteries are best unless you want to roll the dice with some diaelectric sealant.

Add USB Storage to the Blink Camera?

I’ve had some questions about using the Blink module’s USB port for extra storage. As far as I know, this is not possible. The USB port doesn’t let you pop a thumb or flash drive, or an external USB hard drive in to store video, unfortunately. So no, you can’t use the USB port in this way.