64 Bit Jungle

Update, 17/08/08: There is no longer any need to switch to the Experimental branch, if you are using the following Microdia cameras:

0c45:6027, 0c45:608f, 0c45:60ec, 0c45:60fe, 0c45:60c0, 0c45:613b, 0c45:613c, 0c45:624e, 0c45:624f, 0c45:6242, 0c45:6253, 0c45:6260, 0c45:6270, 0c45:627b, 0c45:8105

Keep up to date on the current supported webcams: http://groups.google.com/group/microdia/web/project-status?hl=en

The webcam (Acer Orbicam) on my Acer Aspire 5052 has been somewhat of a bane - with no drivers available, it has been one of the last stumbling blocks of getting all of my hardware working in Linux (the Ubuntu 8.04 Distro, Hardy Heron, in my case). That is until I ambled across, quite by accident, the Microdia Google Group. These guys are the epitome of Open Source development in action - a group of widely distributed people who are collaborating to solve a common problem: to get the Microdia webcams supported under Linux. And they’re doing a fantastic job so far.

Note: I should first mention that the drivers are still heavily under development, and although they are not (for some webcams) to the point where they can be used for Skype, for example, major progress has been made, and there is now finally communication with my webcam, to the point where I can successfully output video to mplayer. Therefore, this post is not quite yet a HowTo on getting a Microdia webcam fully function, but a step towards helping people installing and testing the drivers under development.

So, here’s how I’ve got to the stage of seeing myself in mplayer…

Information Gathering

Firstly, I had to determine i) whether or not my Webcam was in fact a Microdia camera, and ii) the model number, so in a Terminan, I ran:

lsusb

Which output, amongst other information about the rest of my USB devices:

Bus 003 Device 002: ID 0c45:6260 Microdia

confirming that my Acer Orbicam is a Microdia device. The two hex values 0c45:6260 represent the Vendor ID and Product ID respectively - 0c45 being Microdia, and 6260 the Product itself. In order to create my meagre contribution to the Microdia Group, I had to gather some more information about the device’s bridge and sensor. Firstly, I needed the USB Device Descriptors, which were obtained by running:

sudo lsusb -d 0c45:6260 -v > ~/Desktop/0c45_6260_device_descriptors.txt

I then needed to discover the Bridge and Sensor types, which thankfully could be found in the Windows driver file, snp2std.inf:

%USBPCamDesc% = SN.USBPCamVGA,USB\VID_0c45&PID_6260 ; SN9C201 + OV7670ISP

Which tells me:
Bridge: SN9C201
Sensor: OV7670

The full guide to gathering information for your webcam can be found at the Microdia group, here.

Driver Compiling and Installing

The driver code is controlled by git, which I installed by running:

sudo apt-get install git-core gitk git-gui git-doc curl

Also, before downloading and installing the drivers, I ran:

sudo apt-get install kernel-package linux-source build-essential

To grab the Linux source etc. Once finished, I created a directory to set up my local git repository and downloaded the driver code:

cd ~/Documents
mkdir webcam
cd webcam
git clone http://repo.or.cz/r/microdia.git

The final command executes git, and tells it to clone the remote repository. The files are downloaded to a sub directory called microdia, from which I ran the rest of the commands:

cd microdia

Note: If you have any of the following Microdia cameras, you’ll need to switch to the Experimental branch:

6242, 624e, 624f, 6270, 627b, 62bb, 145f:013d, 045e:00f4

Switch to the Experimental branch by running:

git checkout --track -b v4l2-experimental origin/v4l2-experimental

I then compiled the code:

make

and received this error, but it’s not important:

make: ctags: Command not found
make: *** [ctags] Error 127

Once compiled, the module can be inserted to the kernel for testing:

sudo insmod ./microdia.ko

I also received the following error:

insmod: error inserting ‘microdia.ko’: -1 Unknown symbol in module

so had to run the following first:

sudo modprobe videodev
sudo modprobe compat-ioctl32

and then I could insert the module:

sudo insmod ./microdia.ko

Finally, to test, I ran:

mplayer tv:// -tv noaudio:driver=v4l2:width=640:height=480:outfmt=yuy2:device=/dev/video0:fps=30

you may need to change /dev/video0 to /dev/video1 - also, if you don’t have mplayer, it needs installing:

sudo apt-get install mplayer

The only thing is… it’s currently a mirror image, hehehe:

References

1. Microdia, Google Group
2. Full list of currently supported (and unsupported) Microdia Webcams
3. How to gather information on your webcam
4. Using git with Microdia
5. Testing the Microdia driver
6. PATCH: v4l-experimental support for 6260 (3rd try) Thread

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Related posts:

1. Ubuntu Sound on Acer Aspire 5052
2. Broadcom 43xx (4318) Wireless on 64 Bit Ubuntu
3. Repartitioning Ubuntu
4. Ubuntu Usplash
5. Ubuntu Readahead boot profiling, and Bootchart

written by Hodge \\ tags: drivers, Microdia, Ubuntu, webcam