Webcam help needed
24 07 2007Howdy folks. Today I purchased a Logitech QuickCam Deluxe for Notebooks. Not my best purchase by any means, but something my daughter, who lives in D.C., wanted me to get one so we can video talk.
I have been trying here, and reading how-to after how-to on getting a QuickCam to work. None of them have been successful for me. So far I have tried Camorama and it complains about not being able to locate/use /dev/video0. /dev/video0 is there, but Camorama doesn’t like it. I have tried Xawtv and still no success. The system (Kubuntu Gutsy) sees the camera and doesn’t report any errors, but it just will not work. Here is some of the output I have gotten from the typical locations:
lsusb
Bus 005 Device 003: ID 046d:09c1 Logitech, Inc.
dmesg
[ 1818.228000] usb 5-1: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 3 [ 1818.608000] usb 5-1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice [ 1818.876000] Linux video capture interface: v2.00 [ 1818.888000] usbcore: registered new interface driver snd-usb-audio [ 1818.956000] uvcvideo: Found UVC 1.00 device <unnamed> (046d:09c1) [ 1818.976000] usbcore: registered new interface driver uvcvideo [ 1818.976000] USB Video Class driver (v0.1.0)
lsmod
uvcvideo 42884 0 videodev 29312 1 uvcvideo v4l1_compat 15364 2 uvcvideo,videodev v4l2_common 18432 2 uvcvideo,videodev snd_usb_audio 81024 0 snd_usb_lib 17920 1 snd_usb_audio
If you have any ideas, a great tutorial somewhere, or know how I can get it to work, I would greatly appreciate your assistance. Thank you!
make sure you are part of the video group
sudo groupadd video
this may not be too much of a help, but I am using that exact cam with Ubuntu Feisty and ustream.tv [you can see the cam in the sidebar @ threethirty.us]. Flash handles all of the setup so like I said this info may not help too much.
Hey man,
I tried looking online to find a match for your webcam.
It is not mentioned here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/HardwareSupportComponentsMultimediaWebCamerasLogitech
Also, it is not supported by the SPCA drivers - http://mxhaard.free.fr/spca5xx.html
I got myself this one: http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16826123010
And it works on Linux, out of the box, and in kopete and yahoo. Its also got an inbuilt microphone! Maybe, you can return the logitech and get this one?
Excuse me, it’s late
I meant to type
sudo usermod -G video USER_NAME
last post - honest
you will have to try a little ctrl+alt+backspace and relogin to X
It isn’t a user/group issue as by default, users are automatically assigned to the Video group. There has got to be a way to get this thing working, and now I am spending some time tonight trying to figure it out.
I was just looking into webcam stuff this morning, coincidentally. What application are you using? Does it use v4l2? If not, that’s likely your problem. Everything I read indicated that the v4l1 stuff is badly broken, at least when it comes to webcams. Also, a lot of stuff defaults to looking at /dev/video1, and apparently many webcams end up on /dev/video2.
http://www.kaiser-linux.li/index.php/Linux_and_Webcams#Logitech_QuickCam_for_Notebooks
Does this help?
You may want to try to run that driver instead.
It’s just a swing but could work. Sadly, so many cams are all the same. Yet the same model of cam could be totally different on the inside.
Many webcams use some sort of compression/encoding, and the kernel drivers don’t do any decoding (Linus doesn’t want codecs in the kernel). That means userspace has to do the decoding, and probably not all programs implement it.
AFAIK there is no central (userspace) framework/library for webcams, for the applications to use?
Also one other thing to try is fire up ekiga and turn on the video output.
I have a Dell XPSM1210 with builtin logitech webcam.
The only two programs that can make it work for me are luvcview and ekiga.
I have tried xawtv kopete and amsn. No errors, but also no output
So not sure yeah.
Karl
Karl!!!!! YOU SO FREAKIN’ ROCK! luvcview works like a charm. So…this camera is supported out of the box believe it or not, it is just that the other apps aren’t friendly with it yet. Now it is time to get luvcview into our repos! Thanks again Karl, now I know it works, so now I just need to work on some other things. Thanks again, I owe you big time!
Derry wrote:
My suggestion:
I think is far more intuitive.
I’ve got a QuickCam Pro 5000 since yesterday… i haven’t manage to see any picture with xawtv, camora but ekiga reconize it well …
(i’ve use the same driver as you http://linux-uvc.berlios.de/)
good luck with you cam .. and tell’s us wish program can be use with linux to chat with windozien people
If your camera uses the uvc-driver, you can’t NEVER get it with camorama to work, sorry.
uvc uses V4L2, camorama can only handle V4L. That means, after you installed the uvc-driver, the camera works only with software which are able to handle with V4L2. Ekiga can this, for instance. Camoram not (yet?).
No prob Richard,
I’ve tried kopete a few times and done a bit of research, and it seems the developers are aware of and have tried to make some changes to get these cam’s working, but even as of the latest version in gutsy it’s still not working. I’ll wait and see.
Guess i’ll have to get family using ekiga.
Karl
have you tried amsn?
Also check:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-source-2.6.20/+bug/77456
https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/4079
Skip all the previous stuff, the permanent fix is here! Logitec QuickCam for Notebooks is based on spca5xx hardware and Michel Xhaard has added it to the driver. Just download the driver from
http://mxhaard.free.fr/spca5xx.html
and you should be good to go.
I use this cam with the GSPCA (gspcav1-20070508) and it works fine. I recently did some v4l3src fixes in gstreamer too.
Well, webcams are slowly becomung the more and more important in our lives. People will soon understand that webcams can be not only useful, nut pretty as well. Please, review http://www.webcam-list.com/blog/2007/12/retro-webcam.html BTW they have a lot of other useful info about webcams
Hi wonder if anyone can help or point me to were I can get support with my web cam.
windows xp Home ed , 1024 of mem of ram.
Microsoft Live cam -VX-3000 ,
problem, every time someone try to view me on yahoo , msn, icq, they get a error message cannot view my web cam , I also freeze up a lot . I can view the other person on there cam
Thank you
I updated firefox and since i have done that i can not view cams in the lounges on fubar through firefox …..but i can view them if i am using internet explorer think you can help me by telling me why cause i really dont want to use explorer
thanks