Online Demos

We are looking for new, interesting demo locations. If you have a running Palantir installation and would like to be added to this list, please contact us.

It is possible to connect freely to some Palantir installations on the Internet.

These systems can be accessed in a variety of ways:

• Take a snapshot from the video camera (with any browser).

• Watch the live stream in a supported browser (currently Netscape and Mozilla on all operating systems, and Internet Explorer on the Macintosh only).

• Check the status of the devices connected to the server.

• Download the Windows client and start it (no installation is required) to watch the video stream with minimum latency, listen to the audio channel, and check and operate the devices connected to the server.
  Note that the client is server-independent, so it is only necessary to download it once. Just change the URL in the server address text box, or select another server from the "Servers" menu.
  A brief introduction to the Windows client is available here.

These are some of the servers currently available for testing:

tieffesistemi.com	info	snapshot	stream	devices	Windows client	applet
afunk.hnf.de	info	snapshot	stream	devices	Windows client	applet
birdbox	info	snapshot	stream	devices	Windows client	applet
santinoli.com #1	info	snapshot	stream	devices	Windows client	applet
santinoli.com #2	info	snapshot	stream	devices	Windows client	applet

tieffesistemi.com

This server is located at the Tieffesistemi main branch in viale Piceno 21, Milan, Italy.

The connection time is limited to 60 seconds.

afunk.hnf.de

This server is located at the amateur radio station in the Heinz Nixdorf Museumsforum computer museum. The station also acts as an ATV (amateur television) repeater.

The Palantir software runs on the main radio station server, a 233 MHz Pentium with 128 MB of RAM. The video device is a PCI capture card fed by two different sources: a composite color camera aimed at the station's equipment racks, and the current broadcast from the ATV relay.

The connection time is limited to 90 seconds.
Only 4 simultaneous streaming clients are allowed; clients in excess get a snapshot.

Available devices

Clients can check and set the following server parameters:

• the video source to capture from:
  • channel 0: the signal relayed by the local ATV repeater;
  • channel 1: the camera inside the museum;
• the brightness level for captured frames (adjustable by clients);
• the system CPU load average for the last minute (normalized to unity);
• the number of running processes;
• the amount of used RAM in the system, in megabytes.

birdbox

Alistair Riddell, IT Manager at George Watson's College, Edinburgh, wrote:

I have set up a Palantir webcam server which is attached to a bird box located in our grounds in Edinburgh, Scotland. A pair of blue tits have begun to build a nest and in past years we have been able to watch them lay eggs and then look after the baby birds until they are grown up. I would be happy for this to be used as a demo site for Palantir.

Well done, Alistair!

palantir.santinoli.com

This machine, located in Milan, Italy, features a 700 MHz Athlon Thunderbird running a 2.4.25 Linux kernel. The installed RAM amounts to 640 MB.

The server is connected to the Internet through an ADSL link with an outgoing bandwidth of 256 kbit/s.

The recommended time for connecting is between 10:00 AM and 01:00 AM (timezone GMT +2). Outside this interval the machine might be down, but you are welcome to check anyway.

There are two Palantir servers running on this machine.

• Server #1 captures video from the TV tuner embedded in a Bt8x8 grabber card.
  The connection time is limited to 120 seconds.
  The monitorable devices exposed by this server are mostly "virtual", i. e. a reflection of some internal system parameters fed into the server by the sysfeed daemon (included in the distribution).
  These are:

  • the brightness level for captured frames (adjustable by clients);
  • the system CPU load average for the last minute (normalized to unity);
  • the number of running processes;
  • the amount of used RAM in the system, in megabytes;
  • the rotational speed of the CPU cooling fan, in RPM;
  • the CPU temperature, in Celsius degrees.

• Server #2 is connected to a Logitech QuickCam Sphere webcam, featuring mechanical pan and tilt. Connected clients can thus take control of the camera and have a thorough look at the room.

  Regrettably, due to nasty problems with the mainboard USB controller, this server is quite often unavailable.