More webcam success on Ubuntu Gutsy
Saturday, December 01 2007
Flushed with the pleasure of my last purchase, I bought another webcam from Dick Smith Electronics, so that I could set up video conferencing on the PC upstairs. This webcam was on special for $20. It is a DSE XH5221. And I got it working. The chipset turns out to be a Pixart PAC7311, which shows up in lsusb as usb id 093a.
It didn’t run on Ubuntu Gutsy straight away, but it turns out that there is a newer version of gspca that supports it, and I was able to download and install it. There are some nice step-by-step instructions here.
The picture quality is pretty bad, to be honest. Way too contrasty, and with distinct blocky artifacts. However, I can live with that for $20, and I am going to fool with the driver source to see what I can do.
I’ve tested it with Skype, motion, cheese and camorama – works with all of them. I also discovered that if you have been using another USB camera since boot time, all of those programs can get confused (or maybe it’s a V4L problem). But as long as you haven’t plugged another webcam in first, this one works fine.
Tags: webcam ~ linux ~ ubuntu
Friday, November 23 2007
A couple of days ago I bought a “Logitech Quickcam Deluxe for Laptops”. Last night I plugged it into my Ubuntu Gutsy laptop. It worked straight away. I installed the Skype beta – it found the camera. So I had fun making a video call to Hannah in Melbourne, wandering around the house with the wireless lappy. And it all Just Works.
I became so accustomed over the years to every new device needing hours of twiddling with Linux that even though that’s rarely necessary now, it still surprises and pleases me.
Tags: ubuntu ~ webcam ~ skype ~ it just works