web cams - help required!

[Tuftec]

I know that this subject has probably been done to death, but I do not seem to be able to find the information that I need.

I have been trying to get a number of cheap web cams to work with TC so that I can use them in remote monitoring applications on the little eBox computers.

I seem to be struggling to understand which web cams work, how I can find low cost compatible cams and then how I set up TC to make it all work.

The eBox is relatively low on power (1Ghz, 512MB ram) so this is likely to complicate the problem.

I only can get buy with web cams with resolution of 640x480 to keep the data rate low.

I have been trying to use a Pixart Imaging, Inc. Q-TEC WEBCAM 100.

It appears to be recognised when you run lsusb but I do not know what to do next to get it to your.

I have tried loading up the v4l modules and chees but it does not seem to work.

Is there some information that can help me with my quest?

Peter.

[floppy]

hello,
I have a logitech webcam and it runs. See my PC spec in my signature: you have in fact a PC like a FERRARI when I am using a Fiat 500...

In fact I made it running during a "skype" install.
see http://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php?topic=8480.msg45469#msg45469
Perhaps you need firmware, glib2.. as indicated in this topic?
in order to see the webcam, I start the extension "wxcam".
And lowered the processor activity while using wxcam with an advice in this forum: start your webcam with the command "nice -n 15 wxcam &". You can change the 15 with a different value (10 or other).

The webcam is running with a resolution 800x600x16 or higher than 16 (both in Xvesa or in Xorg7-4).

But: I cannot send a video of my webcam with skype.. it abort.. but this is another story.

[combo3]

According to this site the Q-TEC WEBCAM 100 is supported, and the pac207 and spca5xx drivers are included in the v4l extension.

What does lsmod report?

Also check for errors in dmesg.

[Tuftec]

Ok.

It's been a few days since looking at this.
I started up the system and it appears the system is now 1/2 working.

lsmod reports that the drivers are there.
gspca_pac207 has loaded along with gspca_main, videodev, v4l1_compat and i2c_core.

There are a number of entries in DMSEG that indicate that the drivers appear to have installed correctly now.

If I now start cheese if briefly shows a video image and then aborts. The lED on the camera comes on and then goes out when cheese aborts.

We are getting closer.

Any ideas why cheese aborts???

One little thought. I do not have sound hardware on my system.
I want video with no sound!!!
Could this be causing cheese to abort?


Peter.

[Tuftec]

OK.
I loaded up wxcam to try it.
It starts but grumbles about the frame format.

I played around with the frame format but all I can get on screen is a predominantly green image with some lines and blocks going through it. Certainly not something that looks like an image.

At least with cheese I saw an image for about a frame or 2 before it quit.

I must be doing something wrong?

Is there a memory limit or something below which these programs do not operate correctly? I have 512MB RAM. Everything is running in RAM.

Maybe my display driver is not correct?

Any thoughts appreciated.


Peter.

[Tuftec]

If I run cheese from the command line it reports that it can not find some sort of THROBBER annimation file or the backup animation file. It then fails with an illegal instruction fault.

If I try to run it again it gives dbus errors and fails with a segmentation fault.

Not pretty.

Sometimes the system locks up.

[combo3]

Install gst-plugins-good.tcz and see if that solves the problem.

If not, try an online search with the exact error message in quotes and/or post it here.

On a side note, extension-specific problems get better response rates under "TCE Bugs" where the contributor is more likely to take notice of it. Plus it also makes things easier to find for someone else dealing with the same issue at a later date. Perhaps a moderator can split the cheese.tcz portion of this thread off to the correct section of the forum.

[curaga]

I've always used mplayer to test webcams. mplayer tv://

Supports rather many formats, and tends to be more tested than some small webcam apps.


edit: Yeah, an illegal instruction would mean cheese (or one of its deps) was not compiled for a 486 (which the xcore is). Please open a thread about that in TCE bugs.

edit2: cheese pulls in a ton of deps, which may have caused you to run out of ram.

[Tuftec]

So I will try gst-plugins-good  before trying anything else.

I will put up a post in the TCE area. I started here because I thought the issue was initially driver/kernel related.

In the short term I will uninstall cheese and wxcam which both are giving problems. wxcam actually crashes and locks up my system.

Cheers

Peter.

[Tuftec]

Ok.
Went to load gst-plugins.
It is already installed.

I will now try mplayer to see if I get a different result.

[Tuftec]

Which mplayer do I load?
Can no work out how to get it to run with web cam. Tried mplayed-nodeps and mplayer-xorg.

[curaga]

Any should work, as v4l support is in them all. -nodeps might be the most recent of them currently.

[Tuftec]

I will move further posts to the TCE section.