Webcam problems

English Hardware
1

Hi there,

I’m trying to get a webcam up and running and I’m having a few problems.

I’m running OpenSuSe 11.3, gnome and I’m using wxCam to view any webcam output.

It’s an old webcam, output from lsusb

Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub

Bus 003 Device 002: ID 03f0:171d Hewlett-Packard Wireless (Bluetooth + WLAN) Interface [Integrated Module]

Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub

Bus 004 Device 002: ID 093a:2468 Pixart Imaging, Inc. Cammaestro 2.5DU/X-EYE/Orite SC-120/ICGear TravelCam/Easy Snap Snake Eye Webcam

Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub

Bus 006 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub

I thought maybe it needs a driver.

Using YaST
hardware
hardware info
usb

Kernel driver: gspca_pac207

the all knowing google said this driver is found in linux kernels from 2.6.28 release, I have 2.6.34.7

find / -name output

sys/bus/usb/drivers/pac207

tried to install

su

modprobe -l | grep pac207

no error message so I didn’t know if it had installed or not. I tried it again.

Modprobe -l | grep pac207

output

kernel/drivers/media/video/gspca/gspca_pac207.ko

Can I find out if it’s installed?

Opened wxcam

I got an error message

An error has occured during frame capture.

Please check the “frame format” options in the preferences menu.

But I did get an led on the cam to light (must be making progress)

in preferences in wxcam it shows

Webcam device

dev/video0

Driver

Video4linux1

Frame format

Auto

Cam still doesn’t work. Should I just buy a linux friendly cam, is there any good models recommended?

All help greatly appreciated thanks.

Cheers

casperg

2

From what I can gather from this page:

HCL:Web cameras - openSUSE

your camera should be supported. I think all the indications from your various outputs confirm that.

From the lsusb listing, it obviously detected the camera correctly. From the Yast hardware listing, it obviously loaded a driver module for it - which, from the web page, is the correct one.

Normally, the way to see if the system accepts the hardware is to unplug the camera and then reboot, to clear out all extraneous modules (e.g. the one you forcibly loaded with modprobe). Then look at the end of the system message list, using the ‘dmesg|tail’ command on a terminal (this is just to give a reference point). Then plug the camera in and do ‘dmesg|tail’ again. You should see extra lines about hardware detection and driver loading.

You can confirm the appropriate gspca modules are loaded with ‘lsmod|grep gspca’. You should see entries for ‘gspca_main’, probably, as well as the secondary modules loaded with it.

You should now be able to see the created system hardware device ‘video*’ (* = 0 in your case, probably) in the ‘/dev’ directory.

Some applications may not work with the camera directly. Wxcam may be one of those. You then have to use the LD_PRELOAD command extension cited on the above web page. Skype requires this for my webcam, for example. Another problem could be that wxcam expects the picture size to be the typical 320x240 or 640x480 pixels but it is some strange size, such as 464x480 (as per mine).

I tested my webcam with kopete and mplayer, which accepted the odd picture size and did not require the preload. The command for mplayer would be

mplayer -tv device=/dev/video* tv://

where again * = 0, probably, or just shorten the command to

mplayer tv://

if you only have one video device.

HTH

3

That’s great thanks a mill for comprehensive reply HTH. I’ll have another go with the help of above. I’ll try mplayer and see how I get on.

Thanks again

casper

4

The preload worked for me perfectly.

Cheers

casper