Re: webcam support -- first success!!

Hi Michel,

On Fri, May 20, 2005 at 10:18:10PM +0200, michel Xhaard wrote:
> > On the page http://mxhaard.free.fr/camera.html "The Story of Two Little
> > Cams" you write that jpeg is not supported by the kernel, does this mean
> > that v4l cannot be used (in my case 2.4 kernel)? As far as I understand,
> > most webcam software hooks into the v4l API.
> spca5xx is fully compliant with the v4l1 API .To benefit of the jpeg stream 
> encoded by the hardware we only extend the v4l API with our own palette 
> jpeg . That way the spca5xx module only add the missing header and forward 
> the full jpeg stream in user space. For all others palette the spca5xx module 
> decode the jpeg stream in kernel space with the help of a tasklet :) ofcourse 

Hm, does that mean that a standard software (xawtv/camE/motion) would
work with the device, or not?

> you need a strong Linux Box to work that way, i used a 2.2Ghz Athlon CPU and 
> can work with two jpeg webcam at 640x480 with 15 fp/s :)

I would actually be happy with much less -- the grabbing machine has
only 400 MHz (G3 PPC), and it would ideally be able to send the stream
live over 11 MBit WLan. And after all, it would be good to serve the
stream over DSL upstream to the world. 

I realize that I would probably look at the stream in high resolution
here in the local net, but need somehow capture a frame of it every 5-10
seconds, which then feeds the "webcam" page.

If you have a pointer how to achieve that with spcaserv, it would be
most appreciated -- anyway I'll need to do my homework and read more
about the matter in general.

> > (Since spcaview doesn't work for me (yet), I'm looking for another
> > program, in particular since I want to set up something for remote
> > viewing through a webserver.)
> The best should be to used spcaserv in the same package as it forward the 
> stream in MJPG, there are an java applet for the client size to setup in your 
> webserver look at the spcaview package a all in one :)

A Java client can become difficult, I have no Java here on Linux on PPC
unfortunately.

Hm, now that I know about the reset trick (to use the camera more than
once), I have more luck with spcaserv than before (it hung the machine)! 

Very funny indeed:

I just ran 
	'./spcaserv -f -s 320x240 -w 7777' 
on the server, as well as
	'./spcaview -f jpg -s 320x240 -w 192.168.0.248:7777 -j -o /tmp/bla.avi'
on the client, and the client actually started displaying (on the
console) with aalib. I could recognize my table lamp, and even the phone ;))

Of course your fine spcaview app works also in X.

The skin of people is blue, otherwise the colours look very nice ;)

> For the resolution i did not know some spca500 works in 640x480 other in 
> 352x288 depend of the Sensor. I have chek for the i2c slave sensor address in 
> debug mode, but your log say that the chip did not answer and return 0x00 :( 

Hm, the log was one where it did not work anyway (a "second" try,
without resetting the camera or reloading the driver before).

I will send you a "good" log too, if you don't mind, maybe it reveals
something different.

Pete
-- 
the tasty cardinal got the pink cardinal