Hercules Deluxe Webcam :compiling drivers for Ubuntu 8.10

Here again we are facing a crappy hardware with homebrewed drivers, not integrated: sunday morning, let’s compile something.
That’s a translated how to from here

Unplug the webcam

lsmod | grep ov

to check if any module is loaded, and remove it

sudo rmmod gspca_ov519sudo rm -r/lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/ubuntu/misc/media/ov511

sudo rm /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/media/video/gspca

So let’s download the drivers’ sources:

wget http://www.rastageeks.org/downloads/ov51x-jpeg/ov51x-jpeg-1.5.9.tar.gztar -zxwf ov51x-jpeg-1.5.9.tar.gz

cd ov51x-jpeg-1.5.9/

sudo apt-get install build-essential linux-headers-`uname -r`

make

sudo make install

sudo modprobe ov51x-jpeg

echo “options ov51x-jpeg forceblock=1” | sudo tee -a /etc/modprobe.d/options

echo “options ov51x-jpeg force_palette=13” | sudo tee -a /etc/modprobe.d/options

tail -f /var/log/syslog | grep “ov51x”

and plug the webcam, something close to this should appears:

kernel: [324189.288878] ov51x_jpeg: USB OV519 video device found
kernel: [324189.656291] ov51x_jpeg: Sensor is an OV7648
kernel: [324189.758541] ov51x_jpeg: Device at usb-0000:00:1d.1-2 registered to minor 1

(control+c to quit)

gstreamer-properties

and the webcam shoud show up

If not, check the rights:

ls -l /dev/video*
crwxrwxrwx+ 1 root video 81, 0 2009-01-14 20:03 /dev/video0
crw-rw—-  1 root video 81, 1 2009-01-18 14:10 /dev/video1

The first one is good, but not the second webcam, only video access, so to correct it: create a simlink at the module initialisation:

sudo gedit /etc/udev/rules.d/80-programs.rules

And add this line:

KERNEL==”video[0-1]”, NAME=”video%k”, SYMLINK+=”%k”, MODE=”0666″

Restart the service

sudo /etc/init.d/udev restart

now check it works fine:

mplayer tv:// -tv driver=v4l:width=640:height=480:device=/dev/video0

Now you end up with a perfectly working webcam, it’s time to check out the new cross plateform opensource webcam instant messaging:a
http://www.qutecom.org/

(And to drop Skype)

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