Webcam on PCLOS with LXDE

[Nick in Wales]

Hello World!

I've spent the afternoon investigating a problem and just thought I'd share my findings with my illustrious PCLOS friends. I was keen to get Skype with a webcam up and running on my aged laptop (a Compaq Evo N1015v, with 1Gb Ram and an Athlon XP 2000+ processor). From my reading and experience it appeared that getting a webcam for Skype under PCLOS may be a little problematic for some users particularly if you try to reuse old webcams. I have a box full of old computer junk and I tried six different usb webcams with  limited success. Two cameras were branded as Philips, two from Logitech, one from Microsoft, a very cheap and nasty affair which from here-on-in is called the "camera with no name" and finally a local supermarket (TESCO) special called a Technika. Please be aware that my old laptop only has USB1.1 sockets, I have bought a PCMCIA USB2 card but the seller (via ebay) helpfully provided the wrong power adapter cable which made testing anything needing more than 100mA impossible on USB2.

Tested to see if the webcam was recognised with PCLOS and if it worked with "Cheese"(C), Kamoso(K) and Skype(S).

The results were as follows:

Philips no.1  PCLOS yes but as a generic, but very old might even need film! Dead   
Philips no.2 PCVC740K,  PCLOS yes, C no, K no, S no.   
Logitech no.1  V-UM14, PCLOS yes, C yes (poor),K no, S no. 
Logitech no.2  V-UAX16 QCam pro 5000, PCLOS yes, C yes, K yes, S yes. 
Microsoft Lifecam VX-5500,  PCLOS yes, C yes, K yes, S no. 
Camera with no name (CWNN), PCLOS no, C no, K no, S not a hope. It's rubbish. 
Technika TKW109, PCLOS yes seen as Sonix USB2 camera on UVCmodule, C yes, K yes, S yes, works very well.

So the old Philips cameras don't work, the old Logitech V-UM14 only has limited compatibility and does not Skype, the newer Logitech Quickcam pro 5000 is fully compatible and Skypes well, the MS Lifecam VX-5500 works okay but won't Skype (but does under WinXP?), the CWNN is utter rubbish, that leaves us with the supermarket special Technika TKW109 which works well.
 
Conclusion:  From this unscientific and totally random study conducted on a wet Sunday afternoon in rural Wales I draw the following conclusions. Old webcams do not work well on PCLOS Linux straight out the (junk) box, perhaps if I had the time and inclination I might fiddle with them more but I don't think it is worth it as you can pick up a UVC compatible webcam cheaply when buying the coffee and eggs. The Technika TKW109 (1.3 Mpixel with built in mic and a headset supplied too) can be picked up in your local Tesco in the UK for £9.95 ($15). I found this website which provides further reading for the really keen: http://www.ideasonboard.org/uvc/.

Happy Skyping.

Nick in Wales.

4th December 2011

[Just18]

If you want to use old webcams with Skype then launch Skype using the following command

Code:

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

It would also be useful if you posted the id numbers of the cameras, as several cameras with the same name have different internals. That would also overcome the 'no name' problem  

All that said .....  there are some older webcams that no doubt do not work today .....  but I have found most of them useless anyway, in that the pic size limit is often 172x???  or maybe for a good one 352x???

Yes I also had a box of old webcams ...  mostly Logitech .... and spent many hours trying to see if they would work     ......  maybe it is a rain thing     ......  or a Celtic thing ......  or a combination of both 

[menotu]

Thanks for posting your findings Nick in Wales - could save some people some time

[Nick in Wales]

If you want to use old webcams with Skype then launch Skype using the following command

Code:

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

It would also be useful if you posted the id numbers of the cameras, as several cameras with the same name have different internals. That would also overcome the 'no name' problem  

All that said .....  there are some older webcams that no doubt do not work today .....  but I have found most of them useless anyway, in that the pic size limit is often 172x???  or maybe for a good one 352x???

Yes I also had a box of old webcams ...  mostly Logitech .... and spent many hours trying to see if they would work     ......  maybe it is a rain thing     ......  or a Celtic thing ......  or a combination of both 

Hello Just18 and all other Linux Skype camera people,

The reason why I did not identify the old Philips webcam and CWNN is basically they have NO identification on them, the Philips webcam has got Philips written on it and that is all and the CWNN has no brand name or model number or serial number or anything. But as you have asked I have now interrogated the Philips website and tentatively visually identified the old camera as a PCVC820K of approximately 2003 vintage. I'm not even sure the CWNN is even a webcam, it does have a USB lead attached but I have no idea what it is, where it is from or even who it belonged to, it is an enigma and I think it best that it stays that way for now. A project for another Sunday afternoon perhaps? A Sunday afternoon when it is sleeting or snowing.

I agree that trying to reuse old webcams can be a pretty pointless exercise, you can spend ages getting them to work only to find that the resolution is low and the image quality is terrible, this is the case with the Logitech V-UM14, this camera gives a very grainy image with "Cheese" and although it does work with Skype on an WinXP machine the quality is poor.

The command is interesting, I will have to try it one day, but the point behind my investigation was to find a webcam that was just pnp, I hate to admit it but Windows has made me soft in my old age.

Perhaps other people could post their webcam experiences here as a resource for others, as Mentou said it "could save some people some time". 

Nick 

[kernowyon]

Must be a Celtic thing Nick - I also have a shed load of old webcams knocking around!  Most have been converted to "see" in IR specifically, but like you, mine are mostly Logitech (I think I bought a job lot off Ebuyer or somewhere when they were dirt cheap!)

Regarding the non working cam, if you can get the PID and VID numbers from the cam, I am happy to look if some driver exists.
To get the PID/VID, plug it in and in a terminal, use "dmesg" to find the info. Sometimes, lsusb is also handy.

Worth adding the working cams to the hardware wiki ( http://pclinuxoshelp.com/index.php/Webcams )


My Logitech cams work fine, my NexImage astronomy imaging cam (based on the Phillips one ) also works fine.
Even the odd little no-name wonder which the wife purchased years ago in a sale at PCWorld work in PCLOS.

Mark

[scoundrel]

what I think Barely-Legal meant...is the identity numbers in PCC under Hardware. Browse and configure hardware..there you can see all the different identity numbers for the different cams  

Vendor ID: ‎0x041e

Device ID: ‎0x4053

[Just18]

 

lsusb
is the command I use for USB devices ...  my present webcam shows up thus:

Bus 001 Device 006: ID 04f2:a147 Chicony Electronics Co., Ltd

With those numbers the manufacturer and the device can be identified, regardless what its packaging says.

Also they can be used as search terms in the knowledge that the most relevant results will be returned.

regards.

[Nick in Wales]

The Tesco supermarket camera sold under the Technika TKW109 brand is actually a:
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 0c45:62e0 Microdia MSI Starcam Racer
according to lsusb. I now love this command, I will try and use it at any possible occasion. 


Nick

[rubentje1991]

The Tesco supermarket camera sold under the Technika TKW109 brand is actually a:
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 0c45:62e0 Microdia MSI Starcam Racer
according to lsusb. I now love this command, I will try and use it at any possible occasion. 


Nick

Have a nice time with "lsusb"! 
=> and remember: there are more interesting commands in Linux (commands you can't live without anymore after using them once or twice  )

[cirrus_minor]

dev and ven  , database , real handy site.

http://www.pcidatabase.com/

[Just18]

The Tesco supermarket camera sold under the Technika TKW109 brand is actually a:
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 0c45:62e0 Microdia MSI Starcam Racer
according to lsusb. I now love this command, I will try and use it at any possible occasion.  


Nick

Hehehe ....  have a trawl through these links now .....    .....  all you never wanted to know about such stuff  

[ shucks, some of them don't seem to be loading here ....  I will let them stand in case it is a local thing to me ]
http://www.quickcamteam.net/devices
http://mxhaard.free.fr/spca5xx.html
http://www.quickcamteam.net/devices/non-uvc-webcams
http://www.quickcamteam.net/hcl/software/linux/drivers
http://andoy.heroku.com/blogs/10-install_cdr_king_zen_pc_camera_on_linux
http://www.qbik.ch/usb/devices/devices.php

EDIT
            Some info about the quickcamteam site ......
http://forums.logitech.com/t5/Webcams/Quickcamteam-net-down/m-p/730420/message-uid/730420/highlight/true#U730420

It was a huge resource, which I have not had to visit recently - obviously 

[cirrus_minor]

id like to add that my PS3 HD Eyecam worked in LXDE out of the box ( was certainly not the case in windows)

[kernowyon]

id like to add that my PS3 HD Eyecam worked in LXDE out of the box ( was certainly not the case in windows)

Bang the details into the wiki if you can!