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#1 2006-02-23 23:23:15

vilwarin
Member
Registered: 2005-10-20
Posts: 28

Phillips PCV 680K webcam

Good Evening, or whatever greeting fits your time of the day,

I am currently trying to get my old Phllips PCV 680K webcam running under Archlinux.

I followed the Tutorial both of the ArchWiki generel webcam tutorial, as well as some special Wiki article I found for precisely my cam:

[1] http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Webcam_Setup
[2] http://www.think-future.de/wiki/index.p … PWC_webcam

According to Tutorial 2, I recompiled my Kernel (2.6.15.4) with

 CONFIG_USB_PWC=m 

Not in vain, because afterwards the standard pacman pwc package module, recommended for my camera, morprobed without problems. Furthermore my camer is for example correctly found and identified by gnomemeeting.
Alas it doesn't work yet though. So far all I get  is a blank grey screen.

I also checked groups video and set the appropriate chmod rights for user and root. Also just to be sure (I know that's bad style) I chmod 777end /dev/video0.

On Tutorial [2] I also found a nice way to let mplayer play your webcam's signal. So I tried that, because that gave me more console output.
This output claims that it is need of a device called /dev/rtc (Real Time Clock), but can not find any such device. I checked it and there is in fact no such thing /dev/rtc.
Now I'm neither sure if this RTC has anything to do with it, ...
it might be possible though, because RTC seems to be used for timing hardware issues, like the picture-grab rate of a camera?
..., nor how to acquire /dev/rtc. I found that there are several cryptic entries concerning rtc in the /usr/src/linux/.config for the Kernel. But I can get no sense out of them and find next to nothing on google, if I look for their specific names.

Has anyone made experiences with pwc webcams?
Can anyone tell me if this problem might be related to RTC, or if im heading off the track?
Also I added the uhci_hcd module mentioned in Tutorial [2], without further explanation. Does anyone know, what is it for?
Maybe I am just missing another required module or something so obvious, that no tutorial mentions it sad.

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#2 2006-02-28 07:54:52

vilwarin
Member
Registered: 2005-10-20
Posts: 28

Re: Phillips PCV 680K webcam

sorry to push the thread up again, I hope you can forgive me...
#But I still haven't found any clue.
And there must be at least someone, who has heard about rtc

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#3 2006-08-16 07:03:21

vilwarin
Member
Registered: 2005-10-20
Posts: 28

Re: Phillips PCV 680K webcam

I just checked the web for new ideas, which might help me get this webcam running.

All I could find out this time, that the problem might not be the web-cam, but my x-server, as some people also having web-cams or TV-cards encounter the following problem, running xawt to display them on their x-server:

This is xawtv-3.95, running on Linux/i686 (2.6.15.4)
WARNING: Your X-Server has no DGA support.
/dev/video0 [v4l]: no overlay support
v4l-conf had some trouble, trying to continue anyway

Does this help? Is this the hole the problem is burried in?

thx
mike

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#4 2006-08-16 07:13:46

Snowman
Developer/Forum Fellow
From: Montreal, Canada
Registered: 2004-08-20
Posts: 5,212

Re: Phillips PCV 680K webcam

Do you have libxxf86dga installed? If not try installing it.

Do you have

(II) Loading extension XFree86-DGA

in /var/log/Xorg.0.log? If not, probably the module isn't loaded.  Here's my Modules section of my xorg.conf. I don't know exactly wich module is the correct one.

Section "Module"
        Load  "ddc"  # ddc probing of monitor
        Load  "i2c"
        Load  "dbe"
        Load  "dri"
        Load  "extmod"
        Load  "glx"
        Load  "bitmap" # bitmap-fonts
        Load  "type1"
        Load  "freetype"
        Load  "record"
        Load  "synaptics"
EndSection

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#5 2006-08-16 07:25:28

vilwarin
Member
Registered: 2005-10-20
Posts: 28

Re: Phillips PCV 680K webcam

thx for your ultra quick answer ^_^

<1> Yes I have libxxf86dga installed. smile

<2> Yes it does load.

less Xorg.0.log | grep 'DGA'
(II) Loading extension XFree86-DGA
(II) Loading extension XFree86-DGA

<3>
My xorg.conf module section:

Section "Module"

# This loads the DBE extension module.
# This loads the miscellaneous extensions module, and disables
# initialisation of the XFree86-DGA extension within that module.
# This loads the Type1 and FreeType font modules
# changes for pwc: 
# <1> # "omit xfree-dga"
# <2> Load "extmod" "i2c" "ddc" "record" "synaptics"
        Load  "dbe"     # Double buffer extension
        Load  "extmod"
        Load  "i2c"
        Load  "ddc"
        Load  "record"
        Load  "synaptics"
#       SubSection "extmod"
#               Option      "omit xfree86-dga"   # don't initialise the DGA extension
#       EndSubSection
        Load  "type1"
        Load  "freetype"
# This loads the GLX module
        Load  "glx"   # libglx.a
        Load  "dri"   # libdri.a
EndSection

After your post I changed the outcommented the line 'Option      "omit xfree86-dga"   # don't initialise the DGA extension' with an #
and added all the modules in your xorg.conf, that were not in mine: extmod, i2c, record, synaptics

The X-Server still does start. But it still does not work.
The xawtv error message e.g. is still there, minus the Warning with DGA.

~_O smile

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#6 2006-08-17 02:27:50

Snowman
Developer/Forum Fellow
From: Montreal, Canada
Registered: 2004-08-20
Posts: 5,212

Re: Phillips PCV 680K webcam

You could try googling for the error message:

/dev/video0 [v4l]: no overlay support 

You might fing something.

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