How to use Logitech USB webcam?

[rebbi1]

Hi,

I am setting up Puppy 4.3.1 on a friend's ancient, underpowered laptop. (The brand is "Great Quality" (heh, heh) which used to be sold by Fry's. It's got 256 MB RAM and a 1.2 ghz VIA C3 processor.

Well, guess what? Puppy runs on it like a jackrabbit, AND Puppy recognizes his USB D-Link wireless card! Wow.

I'm now trying to get his Logitech USB webcam recognized. A cat command in the console tells me that the vendor ID is 0x046d (Logitech) and that the Prod ID is 0x092e. Some searching on the web suggests that the proper driver for this thing, which I've downloaded, is the gspcav driver.

Now, do I need to compile and install that thing? Should I? And how would I go about it?

Thanks![/b]

[John Lewis]

Hi rebi1,

I have a similar cam logitech but the vendor is 0x92f
If you just want it for Skype read through this thread

http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=49839

You need to download and instal the libv4l mentioned by Tempestuous and use the LD_PRELOAD commands as shown in that thread.

We managed to get Volodya's cam running here. I later emailed him v4l2ucp to give brightness and contrast. I didn't know if I could post it here hence emailing.
wxcam is useful too if you need more than Skype. You only need to download it, unpack and grab the executable.

Hope this helps,

John Lewis

[rebbi1]

John Lewis,

Many thanks for the pointer to that thread. I haven't yet had a chance to try any of the steps presented there, but it certainly looks promising. And yes, I'm trying to see if I can get Skype working for my friend.

Thanks!!!

[rebbi1]

John,

Well, I installed the libv4l library as instructed rebooted, and tried the LD_PRELOAD command line, but got this error:

ERROR: ld.so: object '/usr/lib/lib4l/v4l1compat.so' from LD_PRELOAD cannot be preloaded: ignored.

I also tried installing wxcam from an Ubuntu deb file (the puppy installer seemed to want to handle it, and even put a menu entry in under Multimedia) but it won't run. Trying to run it from console gives me this error:

wxcam: error while loading shared libraries: liblavjpeg-1.9.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Any thoughts what I do from here?

Thanks for your willingness to help.

[jason.b.c]

Hi,

ancient, underpowered laptop. (The brand is "Great Quality" (heh, heh) which used to be sold by Fry's. It's got 256 MB RAM and a 1.2 ghz VIA C3 processor.

And that is "ancient" ..??? UM Ok...

What would you call my 700 mhz p3..? hell..

[rebbi1]

Jason.b.c,

Okay, okay, point well taken... no offense intended!

[John Lewis]

You will need to find this lib and put it in usr lib I think before it will work.
liblavjpeg-1.9.so.0

EDIT: Forget wxcam for now. I was thinking of something else previously.
I've been playing with wxcam and it needs a whole heap of libs to get it to go. Just use Skype for testing.

Not sure what' going on with the LD_PRELOAD bit. Perhaps because wxcam isn't working.

Have you tried in Skype?

I'll set up a card with 4.3.1 and see what I can do later today when I get a bit of time.

John Lewis

[John Lewis]

OK rebi1. I have it working.

I have tried this all out in Puppy 4.31 on a DVD.
I tried first with my eeepc but for some reason it could not see the camera. I'll check that out later.

Using the multi session dvd I installed the v4l1 pup from here:

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 459#346459

Its about half way down the page called libv4l-0.5.8.pet

I rebooted with the camera in the USB port ( Probably not strictly needed but I did it anyway and saved to disk.

I checked with lsmod to see if the GSPCA modules loaded. I found
gspca_spca561, gspca_main, and v4l2_common . Were all present.

I installed Skype from a pet I have. It was Skype 2.0

Then I typed in terminal the following

LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libv4l/v4l1compat.so /usr/bin/skype

When Skype came upI logged into Skype and went to the options > video page where the test screen is. I saw I had a camera listed.

When I clicked test, the image came up. It was pretty dark so I set up v4l2ucp to control the brightness and contrast.

If you get this far I can email you the v4l2ucp executable and the necessary lib file.

John Lewis

[John Lewis]

Here is Wx cam running in puppy. Its own controls don't work for brightness and contrast but v4l2ucp does the trick.

To get it running I had to copy a whole heap of libs from Mepis8. I think I have the whole of libwx_gtk as well as a few others.

Also had to set wxcam to 352 x 288 resolution v4l2 and yuv420p as well as using the LD_PRELOAD trick.

John Lewis

[jason.b.c]

Jason.b.c,

Okay, okay, point well taken... no offense intended!

i wasn't offended , just wish my old comp was as good as yours is all...