{"id":308,"date":"2009-05-13T23:00:53","date_gmt":"2009-05-13T23:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.cyberwizzard.nl\/?p=308"},"modified":"2016-03-17T21:23:39","modified_gmt":"2016-03-17T20:23:39","slug":"quickcam-communicate-stx-on-linux","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.cyberwizzard.nl\/?p=308","title":{"rendered":"QuickCam Communicate STX on Linux"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Looking for instructions to get your latest Logitech webcam to work on linux? Your in the right place! Need a replacement for gspcav1 or spca5xx? Have no clue what I just said but you need a new webcam driver? Please, read on&#8230;<\/p>\n<p> <!--nextpage--> <\/p>\n<p>If you are running linux and have had the QuickCam Communicate STX for a while (like me) you would probably have started out with the <a href=\"http:\/\/mxhaard.free.fr\/news.html\" target=\"_blank\">GSPCAV1<\/a> package &#8211; from 2007.<\/p>\n<p>2007 you ask? Yes, that piece of kit is antique and I couldn&#8217;t get it to compile anymore on any modern kernel (which you pretty much should have if you are running Gentoo). Not surprisingly though, I was not the only one. Besides, a driver for a common camera should be updated more often and even better: it should be in the kernel tree.<\/p>\n<p>Guess what? It is!<\/p>\n<p>It sounds so simple but if nobody tells you how to upgrade from the gspcav1 driver to the new driver in the 2.6.27+ kernel tree &#8211; you&#8217;d be stuck, just like I was.<\/p>\n<p>According to the <a href=\"http:\/\/moinejf.free.fr\/webcam.html\" target=\"_blank\">page of the maintainer<\/a>, pretty much all new Logitech and webcams from other producers work with the new gspcav driver. In my case, my Logitech identifies as &#8216;ID 046d:08d7 Logitech, Inc. QuickCam Communicate STX&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p> <!--nextpage--> <\/p>\n<p>Instructions:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Find your camera on the <a href=\"http:\/\/moinejf.free.fr\/webcam.html\" target=\"_blank\">driver list<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Grab a recent kernel (2.6.27+ will do)<\/li>\n<li>Remember the subdriver name that matches your webcam, mine is zc3xx.<\/li>\n<li>Configure your kernel:\n<ul>\n<li>Device Drivers &#8212;&gt;\n<ul>\n<li>Multimedia devices &#8212;&gt;\n<ul>\n<li>&lt;*&gt; Video For Linux<\/li>\n<li>[*] Video capture adapters &#8212;&gt;\n<ul>\n<li>V4L USB devices &#8212;&gt;\n<ul>\n<li>&lt;M&gt; GSPCA based webcams &#8212;&gt;\n<ul>\n<li>&lt;M&gt; ZC3XX USB&nbsp;Camera Driver<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Decide whether you want it build in or as a module and compile the kernel<\/li>\n<li>Check using &#8216; dmesg&#8217;&nbsp; after plugging in if it worked:<br \/> \n<pre> gspca: main v2.4.0 registered usbcore: registered new interface driver zc3xx zc3xx: registered usb 4-2.3: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 9 usb 4-2.3: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice gspca: probing 046d:08d7 zc3xx: probe 2wr ov vga 0x0000 zc3xx: probe sensor -&gt; 11 zc3xx: Find Sensor HV7131R(c) gspca: probe ok gspca: probing 046d:08d7 gspca: probing 046d:08d7 <\/pre>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>If you see a similar output to the above, everything *should* work.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p> <!--nextpage--> <\/p>\n<p>But as always, there is a catch: if you use the latest Nvidia drivers (if you have an Nvidia card of course) you probably have no DGA&nbsp;support because it got dropped (something with DGA needing a static frame buffer address and dynamic memory management on a graphics card &#8211; whatever) ad when you try to run something like &#8216;xawtv&#8217; you get a warning and only a black image.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<pre> This is xawtv-3.95, running on Linux\/x86_64 (2.6.29-gentoo-r1) WARNING: v4l-conf is compiled without DGA support. \/dev\/video0 [v4l2]: no overlay support v4l-conf had some trouble, trying to continue anyway Warning: Cannot convert string &quot;-*-ledfixed-medium-r-*--39-*-*-*-c-*-*-*&quot; to type FontStruct no way to get: 384x288 32 bit TrueColor (LE: bgr-)<\/pre>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The reason for this is the fact that xawtv and some others try to get the data through the V4L interface which most of the time comes with a DGA&nbsp;display method&#8230; which doesn&#8217;t work&#8230; which means your webcam is working but you can&#8217;t see it&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>This is silly ofcourse and luckely, players like mplayer can use the V4L2 interface as well which allows it to display the feed without a DGA interface. For example to test using V4L2 and mplayer type:<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<pre> mplayer tv:\/\/ -tv driver=v4l2:width=352:height=288:device=\/dev\/video0 -fps 15<\/pre>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Have fun with your webcam on linux! ^^<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Looking for instructions to get your latest Logitech webcam to work on linux? Your in the right place! Need a replacement for gspcav1 or spca5xx? Have no clue what I just said but you need a new webcam driver? Please, read on&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[326,341,253,241,459,242],"class_list":["post-308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gentoo-linux","tag-gentoo","tag-kernel","tag-linux","tag-logitech","tag-not_ok","tag-webcam"],"views":7956,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cyberwizzard.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cyberwizzard.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cyberwizzard.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cyberwizzard.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cyberwizzard.nl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=308"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cyberwizzard.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":426,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cyberwizzard.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308\/revisions\/426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cyberwizzard.nl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cyberwizzard.nl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cyberwizzard.nl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}