Hi

I'm faced with this question:

I have a camera that can be controlled via the serial port using Sony's VISCA protocol. I need a program that will setup the camera and be ready for when a user need to zoom the camera or change any other settings. This could for instance happen during a video conference. But, before one can talk to the camera, the connection to the camera needs to be set up. So you can't just dump instructions on the camera. So I thought I would write a daemon that will set up the camera and then wait for user requests that will be passed on to the camera.

Until now I've had my own library that does all the VISCA stuff which was linked into my apps. But I would like to be able to control the camera at any time from any app. That is the main objective.

However, maybe this isn't quite what daemons are meant to do? Should I use a daemon type program here or rather just a normal user-space program? Also, if I do use a daemon, is there any way I can send requests to it without using a TCP / UDP interface?

Any advice will be appreciated.

Regards,
ZX_SA

A daemon is a normal user space program. Or do you mean that the setup needs to be done in the kernel (e.g. in a driver running in kernel mode that controlds the camera?). To me, a daemon sounds like a reasonable approach. You can have it take commands via a named socket (which looks like a file on the filesystem, like MySQL uses) or even a named pipe.

No, it shouldn't need to run in kernel mode. I'll try using a daemon then. Thank you.