On Mon, Jul 18, 2005 at 07:24:24AM +0200, Thomas Runge wrote:
> On Sun, 17 Jul 2005, Richard Rauch wrote:
> 
> >What kinds of webcam options are there for NetBSD?  I was hoping
> >that they might provide some kind of umass interface, but apparently
> >that's not so, and some (most? all?) use proprietary formats.
> 
> Unfortunetaly, thats true. And there is almost no good documentation
> for the cameras. Once the docs for the ov511 based cameras leaked,
> thats why there is quite some software supporting this chip.

The sn9c<soemthing> apparently got reverse-engineered, without
any help from the designer/manufacturer.

The problem is that these aren't products in a sense that I
can use.  (^&  And the products that I *can* use never say
"This camera based on the OV511 chip," nor do they mention
software compatibility beyond MonopolySoft and Macs.


> >I also saw some discussion about some specialized drivers for
> >LINUX to handle webcams.  A quick look at NetBSD's USB device
> >driver directory didn't look too promising, though.
> 
> Linux has it's V4L/V4L2 (Video for Linux), which handles almost
> all kind of framegrabber cards and USB cameras.

Well, I was thinking of setting up a toy LINUX box again.
(^&


> Making a video framework just for USB cams doesn't make sense for
> me, we can as well support devices on other busses. The problem is

If you mean to be critical of the GNU/LINUX approach, I have no
real comment either way.  (Though it sounds like you are saying
that they can support non-USB cameras...)

If you mean that I shouldn't have expected to find anything in our
.../dev/usb/ sources, I dunno.  After all, the NE2000 ethernet
interface has, for example, an if_ne_pcmcia.c or some such in the
PCMCIA directory.  I don't really know how the kernel organizes
driver sources, but thought that there had to be some kind of
source file for each bus, if you were going to do a kernel
level driver.



> to define a nice interface to applications. :-)  From time to
> time there were discussions, if we could/would/should adapt V4L,
> but discussions dies quite quickly. It will be a lot of work.
> 
> >What options are there?  Maybe some generic access to USB by
> >packages in pkgsrc?  any recommendations?
> 
> <shameless ad>
> graphics/cambevao is a standalone webcam server solution and supports
> supports bktr and ov511+ based cams via ugen(4).
> </shameless ad>

The problem is fiding products that work.  I can't just go out and
buy every camera around until I find one that is compatible.  (^&


> But there are probably more. This nice side comes to mind:
> http://www2.starcat.ne.jp/~takam/bsd/NetBSD.html

I actually found that site, already.  It was of limited help...(^&

The closest thing to promising was the "Qcam"; not sure if that's
the same as the "QuickCam" from...Compaq?

For now, I picked up a cheap one (only $8 before taxes) at a
local Fry's.  I figured for that price, it was hard to go too
far wrong.  I've got a MonopolySoft system I can use it on
for now, but would rather put it on a NetBSD box.  (^&  It
attaches as:

ugen0 at uhub2 port 3
ugen0: Pixart Imaging Inc. CIF Single Chip, rev 1.10/1.00, addr 4

There's insufficient information to tell if this is the snc9c102
type of chip mentioned when I google around a bit.  (shrug)

Maybe I should get a couple more at that price.  They seem to
work well enough...


Thanks.  (^&

-- 
  "I probably don't know what I'm talking about."  http://www.olib.org/~rkr/