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RE: [LUG] hardware: webcams (information)

 


-----Original Message-----
From: Rob Beard [SMTP:rob@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Friday, December 17, 2004 9:40 AM
To:   list@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject:      Re: [LUG] hardware: webcams (information)

Quoting Tom Brough <tombrough@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:

I am very happy to report that not only does my Chicony Twinkle USB PC
Camera have driver support (sn9c102 bridge chip with PAS106 sensor), but
Gnomemeeting-1.2 (released on 13th) now supports V4L2 (which is what the
above driver supports). Unfortunately you will need to run a later 2.6.x
kernel, but at least its now supported as part of the standard kernel
distro.

At 12.49 (see: http://www.thecomputershop.co.uk  ) its not bad, the
quality is better than one of my Labtec's from Argos. The design is
better than the Labtec's as the base is wider and the tilt / swivel
mechanism is more robust.

For the price I am very happy with the quality of picture. For peace of
mind please check you have a sn9c102.ko module before purchasing.

Note also that Argos sell the next model up which is more expensive
because it supports internal mic. I haven't got one of those so I
couldnt say if it works or not !

Tom.

Tom,

Where did you get a driver for this and what distro are you using?

I got two of these cameras the other day, and I was surprised that they
are 
currently on buy one get one free, well at least in the Exeter store they
are.

Works nicely in Windows, I just can't seem to find a working driver, the
one I 
did find won't seem to compile properly.  I'm using Fedora Core 3 at the 
moment, although I've been going through loads of different distros until
I 
can settle on one that I can get on with.

Rob


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Downloaded latest kernel for FC2 last night kernel-2.6.9-1.6_FC2.rpm IIRC.
sn9c102.ko comes as part of the kernel tree. (didnt even need to compile the
source).
Suprised that FC3 doesnt support it do you have the latest kernel installed
?

For source you need http://www.linux-projects.org/modules/news/

You where lucky I went to buy another today in the Torbay branch and found
out that the BOGOF deal had just ended .... talk about bad timing ..... :-(

Note that the driver uses V4L2 and not V4L. The driver has been around for a
while but I really needed support for Gnomemeeting hence the wait for
gnomemeeting-1.2.

See http://www.gnomemeeting.org

usual dependancy hell that goes on with "latest and greatest" / RH the trick
(if your a FC2 user that is) is to "pinch" the pwlib-plugins-v4l2 from the
Suse 9.1 download set as its not supplied as part of FC2 download set. I
think this is because V4L2 is support in gnomemeeting is marked as
experimental and RH tend to be on the cautious side even with FC. Well
anyway it worked for me !

Now if I could only persaude someone to resurrect opent120 project and get
and api for T.126 protocol and then I could have remote whiteboarding as
well.

Its a shame because NetMeeting has this already I would like to see
gnomemeeting going from being a good tool for video conferencing to being a
very good tool for colaborative remote working. My "Big Idea" for the
comming year is to get a school in country A linked up with a school in
country B using where ever possible GNU/Linux tools. Time will tell.

Anyway, if you are still struggling after trying the above drop me an email
off list.

Tom.

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