I was thinking about using VNC, but don’t know if the free version would have any better performance in regards to video streaming over the session. Standard windows RDP isn’t bad, but I’m only getting about 5fps on my webcams over my wifi network.
My wife used VNC at work but she said she hates it becuse it was to slow. They have switched to something else. I’m not sure what she uses now, I’ll have to ask her.
I use VNC at work, however its over the internet… haven’t actually played around with it on a LAN. The thing is, it uses the same remote desktop protocol as remote desktop connection in windows does, so I don’t think it’d have any better performance.
I believe my wifes VNC is run over their intranet.
VNC with a decent network (wifi is plenty. 10mbits is fine) works real time.
With gigabit network I can watch a DVD with it (although the sound comes from elsewhere).
I use it to do stuff on my home server which is headless.
It doesnt use the same protocol as Remote Desktop.
VNC uses raw image data (which is compressed using various methods) while Remote Desktop uses the raw API calls.
Basically VNC is better for video while Remote Desktop is better for windows.
Get TightVNC. It has a enhanced encoding method for the images and its free and open souirce.
5 fps isn’t bad with out getting into $$$ software. Comprssion schemes can make for higher fps, but these often rely on sending data for parts of the frame that have made a significant change. Live video will have a lower fps due to each frame being significantly different. Below is an old webcam program I pieced together some years back. In some testing I did, it seemed capable of faster fps than other similar webcam programs.
I’ve all but given up on the IDE flash modules. Not only are they hard to find in-stock… but I’m thinking the technology is just still too young.
My 8gb 44 pin IDE flash drive arrived on thursday, didn’t get a chance to really do much with it until today. Plugged it directly into my pico-ITX and put my laptop HDD on a usb interface to start the ghosting process… nothing. My Pico-ITX doesn’t recognize it at all and it’s supposed to be 100% native IDE, just like any other harddrive. Might be a bad unit, but I can’t imagine getting a solid state, tested device that is DOA. Might very well be an incompatibility with my pico-itx. Anyway… after the fiasco of trying to order the 4gb version (backordered until further notice), and now this… I’m losing hope.
I did some research and found a 120gb SATA 2.5" laptop drive that has minimal power consumption, and great power saving features, so I’m just going with that. It’s 15x the storage amount, and doesn’t take too much more power, just a bit more space, which I can afford. Loading windows onto it as we speak.
Oh just so you know, VNC splits the entire screen up in to tiny blocks.
Each block is only sent when it changes and each block can use a different compression algorithm.
Works really well especially if you have a solid colour background and Windows Classic (or KDE/Gnome).
Tyberius it should work fine. 
Stick it in a USB to IDE adaptor and plug it in.
That should work. If it does then look at the BIOS and double check you plugged it in correctly.
Can’t just stick it in an IDE to usb adapter.
Two things-
Its 44 pin.
Its a female connection meant to plug right into the motherboard.
No reason I should have to plug it into a usb interface, its supposed to be native IDE support.
What connection/image settings are you using? I played around with the different settings with VNC for an hour, and can’t get it to perform anywhere close to how a straight RDP connection performs. RDP not only seems better for overall windows functionality, its giving me better framerate on video streaming and also taking up less cpu time (VNC is at about 15%)
BTW, Johnny 5 is alive! I have him the pico-itx fully mounted w/ a 120gb 2.5" sata drive and running on battery power now. 
Pics to come.
Wooo Hooo! 8)
Can’t wait to see some pics and perhaps a video afterwards?
I’m tied up with family and the holidays, so didn’t have much time to work on this. Wire management is still being worked on, but its functional. Lighting is poor on these too as I just had enough time to snap a few pics real quick. Video will come soon…
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Hi!
Very cool project you got there!
Awesome pics.
I love your famous Arnold Schwarzenegger pose 
http://img227.imageshack.us/img227/4118/pict0039ei0.jpg
Looking forward to see som vids!
Updated my initial post with the full project info 
Still need to get a video put together, I have some clips but I wanted it somewhat edited before I posted it.
Here are two quick videos I threw together, still haven’t had much time lately.
Demo showing off a few moves and my control console:
youtube.com/watch?v=SQpEbgvxre8
And here’s the progress so far on my object tracking, it’s still very slow, unfortunately still working with Roborealm to figure out a few quirks in the SSC-32 module that are causing it to dip to 1 fps for tracking…
youtube.com/watch?v=vtD83K9J26c
Let me know what you think
That’s really cool. You’ve definitely got a problem with your RoboRealm ball tracking, though. Here’s a video of BrainBot doing the same sort of thing, albeit running on a laptop rather than a pico-itx:
youtube.com/watch?v=tkFTYqprdBU
It was getting closer to 15 or 20 fps in this video…
- Jon
Yup, it’s not even the pico-itx (only using about 15% cpu on roborealm), it’s a problem with the SSC-32 pipeline inside of roborealm. I’m still waiting to hear back from Roborealm on it.
Darn! I see you posted a video but I will have to wait till after work before I can see it since my Pocket PC phone can’t play Youtube.
Cool! Looks like James has some competition in the Johnny 5 music video arena. lol Hope you can figure out the slow frame rate thingy. Keep up the good work.
where did you order the battery from to power the pico-itx board?