Webcams again

[oldgeezer]

Tried various options, searched the archives but absolutely clueless about getting Creative (USB) Webcam (the one without any model number/letters) to function. Which utility is recommended? What driver? How to set it up, etc. (Creative itself is a useless company, appalling website - they don't actually make anything, of course. Any idea who was contracted to make this device?). Anything at all would be helpful, although this is not one IT-person!
Thanks,

[aay]

Do you get anything from when you run xawtv? I have an adaptec cam that used to work fine on previous knoppix releases, but is having problems now - perhaps brought on with the kenerl upgrade to 2.4.21. I'm trying to look into it a little further now so if I get any more info I'll post back.

[oldgeezer]

Found xawtv in /usr/bin but it wouldn't open at all? Tried gqcam, Kooka and a range of other interesting looking possibilities including, on recommendation, some scanning utilities, but none seemed to work. gtkam looked most promising but only had Creative PC-CAM600 listed which doesn't work. Couldn't get it to run in M9.1 either, mainly because it wasn't recognised nor listed in the drivers, again. If it were possible to ID the real manufacturer that might help.

[oldgeezer]

Managed to get hold of an old Omnivision (PC-Eye) AV511 webcam. It fired up perfectly with both xawtv and gqcam. Any further thoughts about the Creative unit?

[aay]

Managed to get hold of an old Omnivision (PC-Eye) AV511 webcam. It fired up perfectly with both xawtv and gqcam. Any further thoughts about the Creative unit?

Sorry I'm not even sure if it's supported. You may want to google around. All I can say is that I'm having a lot of trouble with my webcam and the 2.4.21 kernel. Driver problem? I'm not sure. So your cam may work with the 2.4.20 kernel. Mine works with that one fine. To see what kernel your version of Knoppix is running type the following command from a shell: uname -r

[oldgeezer]

Thanks for those comments, aay. Indeed, I had a look around and discovered that there are a lot of early, cheap webcams about that contain either the CPiA or OV511 sensor. These, apparently, can be a whole pile of trouble! There are other Linux apps to try: pwcx, xcam and Gnomemeeting, but if the others don't work and the cam doesn't appear in the lists, not a lot of hope. [I have since discovered that 'doze users also have their own webcam problems - there's a good chance that an error message relating to MMSYSTEM006 will show up. None of the third-party suggestions given on the web or the 'official' fix are guaranteed to work. This is a SW issue (of course!)].
Any and all additional suggestions very welcome. Thanks.

[ktheking]

First you gotta realise that the main troubles come from the usb chip itself.
Experimenting with different usb chips is important to come to a solution.
This is especially trough for example for via-chipsets.
The best result you usually get with designated usb boards.
Also when using usb ,be sure to put not more then one device (webcam,usb printer,usb mouse,etc.) on each controller.
Secondly in most cases the autodetect from Klaus starts the device properly ,but sometimes a special cheatcode for the driver itself is needed.
The you'd better search which driver is used by the autoconfig script of klaus and search the net for more info about htis driver.
Hope this'll help you..

greetzzzzz

[oldgeezer]

Very interesting and thanks, 'king. Yes, USB 1.0/1.1 was always slated for poor implementation on all boards. Perhaps a good strategy would be to disable onboard USB and fit a third-party PCI board? Maybe even fit a USB2.0 as it should be backward compatible? Not sure whether the penguin knows all about USB2.0, though. Notwithsatnding, there do appear to be additional problems with the two sensor chips mentioned above.
OG.

[ktheking]

Yes indeed USB2.0 chips should be avoided for linux.
(good example are the ones from the newest compaq laptops ,they really suck :twisted: =>try to connect an HP officejet to it in W2K,you'll see)
To overcome problems with USB2.0 chips ,solutions are :
- use USB1.x chips instead
- put a USB1.x hub between your device and the USB2.0 controller

If ya wanna know more about USB versus linux check out
http://www.linux-usb.org
Really interesting..

[Fenix_999]

:shock:
I have a Logitech 4000 pro with a asus A7V8X motherboard that has USB 2.0 and I can't put my camera working.
This was writen in the Linux usb (http://www.linux-usb.org/)

If you're a 2.4 user, use 2.4.22-pre1 or later. That closely matches the Linux 2.6.0-test EHCI code, which seems to resolve the worst problems reported. (VT6202 problems still seem to remain, especially on 2.4 kernels.) Remember this is still classified as 'experimental'.

I hope that the new version for knoppix comes already whit the new kernel version.

[ktheking]

yesssssssss...

knoppix version 05/09/03 contains kernel ver 2.4.22 and indeed all webcam troubles went away (at list with my ov511 based webcam)

[flippantfig]

I have my camera running OK in SuSE 8.2 but the last 2 versions of Knoppix I have tried haven't offered me any solutions t orunning a webcam in knoppix/debian. After a lot of thread reading, mod installing and head scratching I now ask for advice...

The camera is a logitech quickcam clone (dexxa), and its plugged into an asus mobo with usb2.

after a straight HD install and following the usb-quickcam module install instructions (http://qce-ga.sourceforge.net), lsmod gives:

Module Size Used by Not tainted
quickcam 96288 0 (unused)
videodev 5472 0 [quickcam]
autofs4 8756 0 (unused)
af_packet 13448 0
reiserfs 169616 0 (unused)
ext3 64132 1
jbd 46292 1 [ext3]
nls_iso8859-1 2844 0 (unused)
ntfs 51168 0 (unused)
msdos 4652 0 (unused)
agpgart 38296 0 (unused)
via82cxxx_audio 19452 0
ac97_codec 11884 0 [via82cxxx_audio]
uart401 6052 0 [via82cxxx_audio]
sound 55244 0 [via82cxxx_audio uart401]
soundcore 3428 4 [via82cxxx_audio sound]
8139too 17096 1
mii 2240 0 [8139too]
crc32 2816 0 [8139too]
serial 51972 0
usb-uhci 21836 0 (unused)
usbcore 57472 0 [quickcam usb-uhci]
rtc 6908 0

Then dmesg gives:

*snip*

usb.c: registered new driver usbdevfs
usb.c: registered new driver hub
usb-uhci.c: $Revision: 1.275 $ time 00:03:14 Sep 6 2003
usb-uhci.c: High bandwidth mode enabled
usb-uhci.c: USB UHCI at I/O 0xe800, IRQ 10
usb-uhci.c: Detected 2 ports
usb.c: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 1
hub.c: USB hub found
hub.c: 2 ports detected
usb-uhci.c: USB UHCI at I/O 0xe400, IRQ 10
usb-uhci.c: Detected 2 ports
usb.c: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 2
hub.c: USB hub found
hub.c: 2 ports detected
usb-uhci.c: USB UHCI at I/O 0xe000, IRQ 11
usb-uhci.c: Detected 2 ports
usb.c: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 3
hub.c: USB hub found
hub.c: 2 ports detected
usb-uhci.c: v1.275:USB Universal Host Controller Interface driver
...

Linux video capture interface: v1.00
quickcam [28.802416]: ----------LOADING QUICKCAM MODULE------------
quickcam [28.802431]: struct quickcam size: 5424
usb.c: registered new driver quickcam

and running xawtv as a capture device returns:

This is xawtv-3.88, running on Linux/i686 (2.4.22-xfs)
can't open /dev/video0: No such device
v4l-conf had some trouble, trying to continue anyway
v4l2: open /dev/video0: No such device
v4l2: open /dev/video0: No such device
v4l: open /dev/video0: No such device
no video grabber device available

The device files are there in /dev. I have tried MAKEDEV video and also:
mknod /dev/video0 c 81 0
chmod a+r /dev/video0
ln -s /dev/video0 /dev/video

no luck. Its driving me mad! Any suggestions? What have I missed(a kernel recompile??)?