hey everyone,

I have acquired a Logitech Quickcam Express camera thing.. and I'm dangling it out the back of my server at home.. The system is running a beta of Slackware 9 (2.4.19 kernel).

I have recompiled the kernel for V4L support and USB support (it's a usb camera)

I have created a new video device file using:
mknod /dev/video c 81 0

I have extracted, compiled and installed the qce-ga-0.40c driver module.

But what do I do now? I can't find any software to actually use the camera and take pictures. I have looked in the list here and the only NON-GUI option (I'm not running X) is camE, but any attempts to compile it barf with :

/bin/sh: line 1: giblib-config: command not found
webcam.c:27:20: giblib.h: No such file or directory
webcam.c:101: parse error before '*' token
webcam.c:101: warning: type defaults to `int' in declaration of `title_style'
webcam.c:101: warning: data definition has no type or storage class
webcam.c:102: parse error before '*' token......... bla bla bla bla bla.....

shall I just give up now ?

christo

it looks like you are missing a library, giblib?
Try to track it down, or try MPlayer, you can make it use the input from /dev/video and display it in CLI, as far as i remember.
_nskl

It sounds to me like you just need to install gliblib. If its already there then you need to ensure that your Make file is looking for the headers in the right place. You can get giblib from http://www.linuxbrit.co.uk/giblib/

HTH

Jamie...

Thanks for your replies there - I have just been testing with a different application, actually. I have been playing with vidcat which comes with w3cam and it has been quite successful. I'm capturing images from the commandline with instructions like:

./video-capture -s352x288 -f jpeg -l1 -i tv -d /dev/video > /export/rob/www/ha.jp

The only problem is that the images are /very/ dark and I don't see any way with vidcat to increase the brightness or contrast.. hmm. Perhaps I should go back and get camE working and see how that goes !!

if you have any ideas on getting lighter images with vidcat, I'd be really interested

see ya
christo

Are you sure it's a problem with the application? I have a crappy old trust webc@am and image quality is really bad, blurry, dark, and distorted, especially under artificial light, if you have the lights in your room on for example... So maybe it's the webcam not the program's fault
-NSKL

Well it's worth considering.. but the image shown here is just so bad. The bright spot is the screen of my laptop about 10 feet away. I am sat wroking on my laptop between the cam and the screen.. but you can't see me cos it's tooooo dark ! http://212.18.226.160/ha.jpg

I'm really stumped.. I guess I'll try again tomorrow - I'll open the curtains and try a few shots when I'm at work... see if I can see my bedroom in daylight...

any other ideas?
this is sort of fun!

christo

did you try xawtv?

It had the basic controls and got it working right on Redhat. But haven't touched it in the last few months since my instant messenger app (yahoo msgr) doesnt support webcams on linux yet. BTW, I use the same cam.

hi nxny - isn't xawt an X-application?
I'm not running X on the particular machine that the camera is plugged in to. It's a bug grumbling server under my cupboard !!

christo

sorry, didnt know you where running X. You must've played around with it already, but the testquickcam scripts that came with qce-ga might give you an an idea about how to approach the cam from the console so you can configure it.

It's a good idea - I ran the testquickcam script with ./testquickcam /dev/video -r and a whole load of thist stuff (below) came out. Is that a good thing? I rekkon it must be Anyway, if I try redirecting this 'stuff' into an image file, my browser (galeon) replies with "The image “http://10.0.0.45/ha.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors." So it looks like the test was sort of successful, but I'd really like to know what it means

And my images are still very very dark.


[d220]: 00 00 00 00 00 00 02 00 00 02 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
[d240]: 00 00 00 00 01 00 00 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
[d260]: 01 02 06 01 02 06 01 01 08 01 01 08 01 01 0a 01 01 0a 01 01 09 01 01 09 01 02 09 01 02 09 01 02
[d280]: 08 01 02 08 01 02 09 01 02 09 01 02 0f 01 02 0f 01 01 0d 01 01 0d 01 02 0a 01 02 0a 01 01 11 01
[d2a0]: 01 11 01 01 0a 01 01 0a 01 02 0c 01 02 0c 01 02 0d 01 02 0d 01 02 0c 01 02 0c 01 02 0f 01 02 0f
[d2c0]: 01 02 0b 01 02 0b 01 02 0a 01 02 0a 01 02 09 01 02 09 01 02 0a 01 02 0a 01 02 0c 01 02 0c 02 02
[d2e0]: 0f 02 02 0f 01 01 0d 01 01 0d 01 01 07 01 01 07 01 02 11 01 02 11 01 01 0c 01 01 0c 01 01 09 01
[d300]: 01 09 01 02 0b 01 02 0b 01 01 0f 01 01 0f 01 02 0a 01 02 0a 01 01 08 01 01 08 01 02 0d 01 02 0d
[d320]: 01 02 10 01 02 10 01 02 0c 01 02 0c 01 01 11 01 01 11 01 02 10 01 02 10 01 02 0d 01 02 0d 01 01


thanks,
christo

I have something that might, er, shed some light on the situation.. (horrible pun totally intended).

I have the mod_quickcam.o USB driver module loaded.. and running modinfo mo_quickcam.o tells me about some interesting options such as:

parm: rgain int, description "Initial value of red gain (0-255)"
parm: bgain int, description "Initial value of blue gain (0-255)"
parm: ggain int, description "Initial value of green gains (0-255)"
parm: bright int, description "Initial value for brightness (0-65535)"

I have tried numerous combinations of these paramers bu rmmod'ing the module and insmod'ing it with stuff like: insmod mod_quickcam.o bright 60000, but it doesn't seem to make any difference whatsoever to the image


Running lsmod tells me the following about my loaded modules: I'm just wondering if the '0' in the 'used by' column means anything? I mean the module is definiteily being used - otherwise I wouldn't be able to open the device... hmmm

Module Size Used by Not tainted
usb-uhci 20684 0 (unused)
audio 37812 0 (unused)
mod_quickcam 39152 0
videodev 5472 1 [mod_quickcam]
cmpci 25104 0 (unused)
ohci1394 15980 0 (unused)
.... etc

chris
(who still has very gloomy imgaes)

try /sbin/modinfo -p path/to/mod_quickcam.o to see what all the module accepts

this is what mine says..
--------------------------------------------------------------
debug int, description "Sets the debug output (1,2,4,8,16,32)"
interpolation int, description "Sets the interpolation mode (0-1)"
mode int, description "Sets the speed (0-1)"
keepexposure int, description "Keep gain settings across one open to another (0-1)"
tobgr int, description "Automatic RGB -> BGR conversion"
rgain int, description "Initial value of red gain (0-255)"
bgain int, description "Initial value of blue gain (0-255)"
ggain int, description "Initial value of green gains (0-255)"
bright int, description "Initial value for brightness (0-65535)"
video_nr int, description "Set videodevice number (/dev/videoX)"
--------------------------------------------------------------

The documentation says...
insmod mod_quickcam.o debug=n (n=1,2,4,8,16,32 or any ored values).
insmod mod_quickcam.o rgain=red bgain=blue ggain=green.
red, blue and green are initial gain values this allows to correct the
colour of the images. The default values are rgain=192 bgain=192 ggain=176

---------------------------------------------------------------


My version of qce-ga is 0.40c. If yours is a later version, it might have more/different options. But that should give you a headstart, I guess. If you get it going right, drop me a line with the params you passed.


Also from your previous message, the raw video frames sent by the modules cannot be saved as a jpeg file, because,

1. it actually has more than 1 frame/image
2. even if it were 1 frame, it takes a jpeg compression algorithm to run thru it and make it a valid jpeg file that can be decompressed and displayed.

But I have saved raw audio from my microphone and fed it to /dev/audio ( plain file redirection ) and played it back. so the file you create from the output of the tstquickcam scripts might be playable thru /dev/video . Just throwing a wild guess at you.

Ohh, I forgot to add. I think the mod_quickcam module will be marked as used only when another module is using it. as you can see mod_quickcam is using videodev.