Date: Tue, 31 Jan 2006 15:49:12 -0500 From: Simon Chang <simonychang@gmail.com> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Regarding QuickCam webcams and FreeBSD Message-ID: <8efc42630601311249o7e03d4chbec88aa5fed9854a@mail.gmail.com>
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Howdy, I happen to have been doing quite a bit of research in this area. What I wanted to do was to set up a *nix box with a webcam and a wireless NIC, so that I can mount the headless machine in the bedroom to keep an eye on our seven-month-old baby. (Link between the *nix box and the home private network will be encrypted using IPsec VPN.) What I have found so far are the following: 1) The apps that I have found do not work with a wide variety of more recent makes of webcams. If you do a Google search on "FreeBSD webcam" or "OpenBSD webcam", you actually see some tools that purportedly work with QuickCam Express or QuickCam B/W (or Color), and a handful of other models. 2) Logitech, the maker of QuickCam, used to make available technical specs and docs for the developers to write drivers with. Unfortunately, the company does not do that anymore, and anyone who wants to make a QuickCam-series work has to either reverse-engineer it, use available drivers and hope for the best, or run it under Windows. 3) By contrast, NetBSD and some Linux distros (so far I've heard promising things about Fedora Core 4 and I think Gentoo) have more development work going on for webcams. If FreeBSD doesn't work for you, try some of the other *nixes. HTH, SC - Hide quoted text - On 1/29/06, Xn Nooby <xnooby@gmail.com> wrote: > I bought a fancy Quickcam (face-tracking), though I have no idea how to m= ake > it work with FreeBSD. I installed qcamview, but when I run it as root, i= t > says "Not found Quickcam, or Permission denied". > > Anyone know anything about Quickcams on FreeBSD? I don't expect it to wo= rk, > but it would be cool if it did. There seems to be very little informatio= n > on the net about qcamview. > > I'd be happy to just snapshots with it. I'm using FreeBSD 6.0 and Fluxbo= x. > The cam is USB 2.0. > > Any suggestions? > _______________________________________________ > freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list > http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions > To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscribe@freebsd.o= rg" >
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