Webcam Support

[mopeyjoe]

Creating this as a thread for those of us that would like to use the pogoplug as a webcam server. I will post my progress and would appreciate any successes or failures of the community.

as I understand it currently we are missing some module pointers in the kernal that would allow webcams to mount?

[xenoxaos]

Correct.

[Philoo]

I recently recompiled the 2.6 kernel with V4L and webcam support in it. I just haven't tested it yet.
I can confirm that just providing the modules is not enough. udev sees the webcam, loads the modules (they show up in lsmod) creates the devices, but that's it. All you get from stock kernel is a uniformly medium grey image.

[bgulla]

What type of server are you planning on running? I have successfully gotten motion to work but it's features are limited. Zoneminder is a beast but you will spend hours (and hours) trying to build and configuring ZM.

I have two webcams that work plug and play (i might have had to load a module at some point). Keep us posted

[Philoo]

would you share your config.

My kernel actually boots but I cannot get the webcams to work properly (one no brand uvc and one old logitech using the pwc driver).

[Philoo]

Got that partially working.
kernel boots but I encountered a couple of hurdles:
1. depmod -a failed complaining about a missing modules.builtin . After some googling I had nothing really solid but symlinking the modules.dep file in the modules directory got depmod happy and my uvc webcam showing pictures.

2. according to a gentoo forum my old quickcam pro 4000 requires the (deprecated) support for video4linux 1 instead of the (new) compatibility with v4l1. After doing so I cannot get to load the pwc module. At least now lsusb returns something when that webcam is connected, and something right. before it would just return NOTHING.
Will continue investigate a little bit.

[Philoo]

Update:
need to get pwc in the kernel, but then the QC pro 4000 does not initialize properly. Seems to be an old logitech bug. Need ohci support in the kernel to work around it. Since I have one working webcam option for my project I'm leaving it at that.

[bgulla]

philo- I will try to look into this for you tonight. I might have been using it on my GOFLEXNET, so maybe that's why?

i.have.too.many.plugs.

[Philoo]

Much appreciated, but do not waste too much time on that, I've got a working webcam, only not the dust accumulating oldie I wanted to put to work but that's fine I guess.
Next time I'll be wrestling with kernel compilation on the pro I will most likely be with a 3.x branch.