[H-GEN] USB Webcam in Linux; resources needed

[Christian Bullow]

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I have recently purchased, well closer to given but in lew of services
rendered, a cheap digital pencam/webcam. I noticed that dick smith sell
a very similar product on sale at the moment for $58. It works ok in
windows xp, but I spend most if not nearly all my time in linux and am
slowly searching the web in my free time for drivers, or technical
information on this product. I would appreciate any assistence or
information anyone else might be able to give me. I have asked a few
vendors for information regarding the camera in the past few weeks but
have either recieved no information or a very summary reply stateing
something along the lines of "due to licencing agreements we are unable
to distribute the drivers in any other format other then the
installation cd you recieved at purchase, and in no cases may we divulge
the source code if we were to have it." 

Its not bad in quality for a cheap / free cam. 
http://www.vicomte.tk/  - "my webcam" link or
http://alphadimensions.net/~vic/webcam.php

I believe with the aid of the video for linux project for which I have
done some work for before (linux drivers for bttv / flyvideo 98 tv card)
I might end up writing my own drivers for it. But that will be a last
resort if I can not find any other information which either might prove
an  end-solution or time saving factor in creating my own
software/kernel support. I have had little to no experience with dealing
with the USB interface.

The box I got it in was a very simple unremarkable blue box which
contained no real pertinant information, least of all a manufacturer or
part number/ID code. It mentions a number of times the camera is a
"Dual-Mode DSC(2770)". The manual was in very poor english and didn't
aid in identification of the camera either except for mentioning at the
bottom the code "CD30P".

I believe it is a Mitek CD30P, it certainly has the same specs, but as
to the real manufacturer who knows. Aiptek have a similar product (url
below), and Dolphin a "fastusb-1007".

I opened the camera up and the best information I could get from the
chip when I slowly peeled away the glue holding the speaker on was as
follows;

 |_|_|_|_|_| 
|           |
- SOLUTION  -
|           |
- S5SV6416  -
|           |
- 21323 T2F -
| _ _ _ _ _ |
 | | | | | |


I am using linux kernel 2.4.20 on debian 3.0r1 upgraded to latest
'unstable' packages (which usually to me are quite stable).

Basic stats of this machine are;

CPU
model name      : AMD Athlon(tm) XP 1800+
stepping        : 2
cpu MHz         : 1533.427
cache size      : 256 KB

Ram
MemTotal:       25"5868 kB / 256mb's of DDR 400Mhz'

IDE Devices
hda: MAXTOR 6L080J4, ATA DISK drive
hdb: IC35L060AVVA07-0, ATA DISK drive
hdc: LITE-ON LTR-48246S, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
hdd: Pioneer DVD-ROM ATAPIModel DVD-114 0206, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
hda: 156355584 sectors (80054 MB) w/1819KiB Cache, CHS=9732/255/63,
UDMA(133)
hdb: 120103200 sectors (61493 MB) w/1863KiB Cache, CHS=7476/255/63,
UDMA(100)
hdc: ATAPI 48X CD-ROM CD-R/RW drive, 2048kB Cache, UDMA(33)
hdd: ATAPI 40X DVD-ROM drive, 512kB Cache, UDMA(33)

Video: Geforce DDR 
rivafb: PCI nVidia NV10 framebuffer ver 0.9.3 (GeForce-DDR, 32MB @
0xD0000000)
0: nvidia: loading NVIDIA Linux x86 nvidia.o Kernel Module  1.0-4349 
Thu Mar 27 19:00:02 PST 2003

TV Card / V4L
bttv0: Bt878 (rev 2) at 00:07.0, irq: 10, latency: 32, mmio: 0xdddfe000
bttv0: detected: FlyVideo 98 (LR50)/ Chronos Video Shuttle II [card=35],
PCI subsystem ID is 1851:1850
bttv0: using: BT878(Lifeview FlyVideo 98 LR) [card=35,autodetected]


>From dmesg I also gained upon plugging in the Camera;

hub.c: new USB device 00:11.3-1, assigned address 2
usb.c: USB device 2 (vend/prod 0x2770/0x9120) is not claimed by any
active driver.

Device 2 as 1 is;
input0: USB HID v1.00 Mouse [Microsoft Microsoft IntelliMouse® Explorer]
on usb2:2.0

Unfortunately, /proc/bus/usb has nothing in there to cat even though
proc file system support is on and usb debugging is on.

I found a mention of "pencam's" in the kernel config for camera's stv680
chipset, but even though I don't have that chip, and that I compiled it
anyway just to see what happens, the same 'usb.c: USB device 1
(vend/prod 0x2770/0x9120) is not claimed by any active driver.' message
comes up.

>From some searching of the net I believe that the people responsable for
this vendor id are a company called NHJ. I can't read any japanese
though, so going to http://www.nhjapan.com/ doesn't do me too many
favours. Just looking at the images (http://www.rakuten.ne.jp/gold/nhj/)
shows me that the particular camera I have is not there, but I believe
it could be the same parts or components that are included in their
"che-ez!Moni-Me".

Some Pertinant links;
http://www.mitek.com.tw/2ndround/dcam/cd10p.htm
http://www.aiptek.com.tw/english/product/dsc/pencam/pencam1.html
http://www.dolphinfast.com/products/1007.html
http://www.rakuten.ne.jp/gold/nhj/
http://www.nhjapan.com/

I was hopeing that there might be some people who have encountered
similar problems or have been considering getting their particular
webcam devices to work under linux, and/or have been succesful in
setting up their camera. If anyone could help me out here, it would be
greatly appreciated.

Kind Regards,



Christian Bullow aka Vic


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