• dase
  • Member
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  • Registered: 2008-05-27
  • Posts: 11

Topic: Final word on webcams (begging for info)

Hi all,

I'm really hoping someone who works on the Chumby team can help out here. I really (did I mention really?) want to get a USB webcam working with the chumby so I can capture images and audio from it. Are there any linux driver / usb webcam combos out there that work with the Chumby? I would love to see an example of a camera working. Thanks!

  • dase
  • Member
  • Offline
  • Registered: 2008-05-27
  • Posts: 11

Re: Final word on webcams (begging for info)

Seriously? Anyone from the kernel/driver team have any info here? This is really blocking me from using the chumby in my robot. I would love help :-).

  • From: Barcelona
  • Registered: 2008-07-17
  • Posts: 100

Re: Final word on webcams (begging for info)

Maybe you are the first trying to do this, you could start finding some information about the linux distribution in chumby, then try to find camera drivers for your cam on internet and then try to build them in chumby.
I hope you'll find it out!

--
theMartix - Barcelona
Website: http://www.vintiun.net/marti   Chumby Widgets
CosmicPanel for Chumby: http://www.vintiun.net/blog/tag/cosmicpanel/?order=asc

theMartix's Website

  • Registered: 2009-04-05
  • Posts: 12

Re: Final word on webcams (begging for info)

The Botball Chumbys have the driver microdia.ko, which seems to work okay on them.  Unfortunately, I'm not sure how their libraries are accessing the camera, and they don't seem particularly interested in helping me.  It's standard Video4Linux, but when I compiled various V4L programs for Chumby, they all either segfaulted or gave errors.  If you're willing to put up with 160*120 resolution, and you don't need to use the screen while running your camera code, the Botball cbcui program can write a camera image to the Chumby framebuffer, which you can grab using the Chumby screen grabber program.  The Botball Chumbys have a breakout board attached; I don't know how cbcui will behave if the breakout board isn't present.  It's worth a try.

If you'd like a copy of the Botball Chumby firmware image, you can probably ask the botball.org people; there's a good chance they'd be willing to give you a firmware image.

If you happen to find a way to read raw images from the microdia camera at a higher resolution than 160*120, please do let me know.  I've been trying for a month or so, with no success.  :-/