Hi all,

I've been keeping an eye on the Linux world for some years now, and have finally made the full transition from MS Windows at home. I'm reasonably comfortable with the basics now and have almost got my laptop working as I need it (tv out being the latest "success").

I now have only one or two issues that I need to resolve before I'm happy.

The issue that's burning a hole in my head currently is getting my digital camera working. It's a Umax AstraPix 430 Plus, and was a Christmas present (hence no prior checks made for compatibility).

I'm using Fedora Core 2 and when plugged in, the camera is detected on the USB port. It is identified as ViewQuest Technologies, and the system appears to successfully add an audio device. What I can't see at all is any reference to mass storage, or anything else that could be useful in terms of downloading images.

I've been doing a fair amount of googling but can't find a reference to this particular camera - I think gphoto has support for the AstraPix 320s, and there was a thread on this forum about the 470 (from which I gather the 470 presents itself as a mass storage device)

Searching for ViewQuest Technologies throws up the fact that a number of manufacturers/models appear to use VQ kit. The 430Plus touts itself as a 1.3megapixel camera, a description that is very similar to those used by other cameras (e.g. Aiptek)

There also seems to be a fair number of references to spca50x - and one way or another I can find links to Linux.

What I've found so far leads me to believe that the camera CAN be made to work with Linux somehow, but I'm not too sure about where to start.

I'm a programmer so I'm not bothered if I need to code/compile something - in fact I'm quite keen to do that in some ways. My main problems are that my experience is exclusively on DOS and Windows, and I've never got involved with hardware interfaces.

So if anyone has information about the camera, particularly with regard to Linux, that would be very welcome. Also pointers to further diagnosis I could make myself, or information about developing something (e.g. a gphoto driver?). For all I know, the camera might be working and it's my lack of knowledge about usbfs, or linux generally, that's at fault

Thanks in advance.

Have a look at this url. This is a Debain user getting a USB Astra camera running using Gphoto2.

http://jace.seacrow.com/tech/linux/usbcam

I don't know your camera, but if it uses removable SanDisk media, you can purchase a USB SanDisk media reader. They are available at a lot of good camera stores, and don't cost too much. You can mount the SanDisk as mass storage, and use Ghoto2 to copy the images to your disk. It was relatively easy to set up.

My camera supports PTP mode. If yours does, it will probably work also. Have a look at the camera doc to see if it is supported.

Hope this helps.