USB webcam on Pogoplug

Hi,
I'm using a Logitech C310 wecam on a Pogoplug E02, running Arch. I'm using Motion as the webcam streaming server.

A weird thing happens - about 40% of the time, it works fine. I can start Motion, and it connects to the webcam just fine. I can shut down motion and restart motion and it always works.

However, if I reboot the Pogo, there's a 60% chance that Motion will not work. I get the error below. I need to reboot. There's a 40% chance each reboot fixes it.

Interesting, if I run "fswebcam" before I run Motion, it seems to work every time. It's like "fswebcam" seems to prime the system to run Motion correctly. Without fswebcam, I have a 60% failure rate for Motion.

Here's the error I get from Motion.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')[root@alarm ~]# motion
[0] Processing thread 0 - config file /etc/motion/motion.conf
[0] Motion 3.2.12 Started
[0] ffmpeg LIBAVCODEC_BUILD 3489124 LIBAVFORMAT_BUILD 3481700
[0] Thread 1 is from /etc/motion/motion.conf
[0] motion-httpd/3.2.12 running, accepting connections
[0] motion-httpd: waiting for data on port TCP 8080
[1] Thread 1 started
[1] cap.driver: "uvcvideo"
[1] cap.card: "UVC Camera (046d:081b)"
[1] cap.bus_info: "usb-orion-ehci.0-1.3"
[1] cap.capabilities=0x04000001
[1] - VIDEO_CAPTURE
[1] - STREAMING
[1] Config palette index 6 (YUYV) doesn't work.
[1] Supported palettes:
[1] 0: YUYV (YUV 4:2:2 (YUYV))
[1] 1: MJPG (MJPEG)
[1] Selected palette YUYV
[1] VIDIOC_TRY_FMT failed for format YUYV: Input/output error <<<---------
[1] Unable to find a compatible palette format.
[1] ioctl (VIDIOCGCAP): Invalid argument
[1] Could not fetch initial image from camera
[1] Motion continues using width and height from config file(s)
[1] Resizing pre_capture buffer to 1 items
[1] Started stream webcam server in port 7081
[1] Retrying until successful connection with camera
[1] cap.driver: "uvcvideo"
[1] cap.card: "UVC Camera (046d:081b)"
[1] cap.bus_info: "usb-orion-ehci.0-1.3"
[1] cap.capabilities=0x04000001
[1] - VIDEO_CAPTURE
[1] - STREAMING
[1] Config palette index 6 (YUYV) doesn't work.
[1] Supported palettes:
[1] 0: YUYV (YUV 4:2:2 (YUYV))
[1] 1: MJPG (MJPEG)
[1] Selected palette YUYV
[1] VIDIOC_TRY_FMT failed for format YUYV: Input/output error
[1] Unable to find a compatible palette format.
[1] ioctl (VIDIOCGCAP): Invalid argument

[grayman4hire]

Other users have reported this issue. The simple solution as you discovered is to run fswebcam before launching motion. Not ideal, but it works.

fswebcam -r 320x240 -d /dev/video0 -v /dev/null

[permitivity]

No way! Other people have this exact same issue?

I have no idea why fswebcam somehow primes the system to work with the Motion app.

The problem is, I want Motion to run on start-up, so this bug for specific webcams is kind of a bummer. Is there a way to start fswebcam first on start-up, then automatically shut down fswebcam, and then start up Motion?

[grayman4hire]

Yup, it was mentioned in this thread - viewtopic.php?f=31&t=3149&hilit=motion+fswebcam

I'm sure you can launch fswebcam before starting motion. Maybe it's simple as chaining the fswebcam command with the motion command in a systemd service file.

fswebcam blah blah && motion

[makuab]

I got motion + fswebcam fix working at startup

1. Go to /etc/systemd/system
2. nano yourmotionservicename.service
3. put this in there $this->bbcode_second_pass_code('', '[Unit]
Description=Your Description

[Service]
ExecStartPre=/usr/bin/fswebcam -r 320x240 -d /dev/video0 -v /dev/null
ExecStart=/usr/bin/motion -c /path/to/your/config

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
')
4. Test it with systemctl start yourmotionservicename.service
5. Enable it at start with systemctl enable yourmotionservicename.service

Also a question for you, have you gotten the MJPEG pallet to work in your motion.conf? Mine gives a gray stream and throws errors about extraneous bits.

[permitivity]

makuab,
I have that directory </etc/systemd>. But I don't have yourmotionservicename.service, I don't have any files in there with *.service. Where did this file come from?

As for getting MJPEG pallet to work - no. I'm not sure what the Palette function does, but the only one that works for me is #6, YUYV. At least with the cameras I have (Microsoft lifecam cinema and Logitech C310).

[makuab]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('permitivity', 'm')akuab,
I have that directory </etc/systemd>. But I don't have yourmotionservicename.service, I don't have any files in there with *.service. Where did this file come from?

As for getting MJPEG pallet to work - no. I'm not sure what the Palette function does, but the only one that works for me is #6, YUYV. At least with the cameras I have (Microsoft lifecam cinema and Logitech C310).

[permitivity]

makuab, thanks for this info. I'm running into the same issue as the other poster - trying to understand how the *.service works. I'll dig into it more later.

Thanks.