benjojo
New blog post (in over a year!)

"
Driver adventures for a 1999 webcam
"

In where I refuse to accept that a webcam that I remember from my childhood won't work anymore for Google Meet, and write a userspace USB driver to bring it back from the obsolete dead:

https://blog.benjojo.co.uk/post/quickcam-usb-userspace-driver

Apr 28, 2023 at 10:23amWeb
Show threadmmu_manApr 28, 2023
@benjojo oh these old proprietary thingies…
Show threadmmu_manApr 28, 2023

@benjojo I started writing a modular driver for Haiku for my Sonix webcam but didn't finish…

There are actually some libraries out there that offer support for many models…

like https://sourceforge.net/projects/libwebcam/

libwebcam

Download libwebcam for free. The webcam-tools package . The webcam-tools package contains the following two components: - libwebcam Webcam Library (LGPL) - uvcdynctrl Manage dynamic controls in uvcvideo (GPL) This project was first developed by logitech and it was hosted at a svn repo in the quickcamteam site, but since then logitech shutdown the site. So now after getting the OK with the developer Martin Rubli, we migrated the code to sourceforge.

SourceForge
Show threadJavierApr 28, 2023
@benjojo you have the USB version? I remember the one with an RS-422 connection! (I think it had a PIC-18 microcontroller inside)
Show threadbenjojoApr 28, 2023
@javierg huh interesting, so the one I now have is the same as the one I had as a child (that I suspect my mother got rid of when they moved house at some point). Never seen the serial ones, but it's obvious at the time they were made that they would exist
Show threadblobby tablesApr 28, 2023
@benjojo @https://blog.benjojo.co.uk/post/[email protected] I am fascinated that my client (Ivory for iOS) is trying to interpret your link as…a user??
Show threadbenjojoApr 28, 2023
@blob I don't know what does this. But you are not the first to hit it

@tedu Is this a benjojo honk special bug or something you already fixed/know about?

Show threadteduApr 28, 2023
@benjojo haha, this is a feature! in honk, anyway.

honk adds class=mention to all links because that prevents mastodon from creating previews, which I think are dumb.

Clients should not be pulling the mention list from the html, however. It's in the metadata for a reason.

Show threadeta (moved)Apr 28, 2023
@tedu @benjojo I guess pinging @ivory then — looks like their client is broken?
Show threadbenjojoApr 28, 2023
@tedu ah interesting! Good to know
Show threadfuricleApr 28, 2023
@benjojo oh my, I think I might still have one somewhere.....
Show threadTerence EdenApr 28, 2023
@benjojo that's an excellent write-up!
Show threadbenjojoApr 28, 2023
@Edent thank you!
Show threadBen CApr 28, 2023
@benjojo oh nice, I had one of those too! I don’t think I still have it but will have a rummage in my spares box over the weekend.
Show threadKevin Karhan Apr 28, 2023
@benjojo Yeah... #USB - #UVC made shit work so flawlessly easy....
Show threadAlexander BochmannApr 28, 2023

@benjojo Strange, my old Dexxa Quickcam is still being recognized by v4l on Debian. Don't remember which driver is being used exactly, would have to take a look after the weekend.

Though I did have to use an upscaled video on a v4l2loopback device too for the the stream to be processed by more modern software (only xawtv worked directly with the original video output).

Show threadAndrej ShaduraApr 28, 2023
@benjojo, huh, I have a very similar one, there was even an incomplete driver for mine, but I never found time to fix it and port it to a recent kernel.
What chip is this one based on?
Show threadFellMay 2, 2023
@benjojo This was a very interesting (and amusing) read. But why did you choose to write a userspace driver, when that qc-usb driver already existed?
Show threadbenjojoMay 2, 2023
@fell because it's not compilable on modern Linux and I didn't really want to port it forwards only for that to happen again