Status of driver ov511 based cameras

[Hans de Goede]

Jean Francois Martinez wrote:
> There are two drivers for those cameras:
> 
> -the 1.x driver who is in the kernel and is basically useless since the
> only OV511 cameras who are not by today standards as obsolete as a 20
> Mhz 386 don't work with it.
> 
> -the 2.x driver at alpha.dyndns.com/ov511.  This is the only one who
> works with
> the late models who used this chip (and the ones who are still useful).
> Probelm is that the author has not updated its site in two years and
> that it no longer compiles with present day kernel.  I fixed it for
> 2.6.16 kernels and sent the patches to the author but got no answer.
> And kernel 2.6.24 (I think) broke it again (or more exactly made it
> no longer compile).
> 
> Question if I fix it again what are the chances it ends in Fedora?   How
> are orphaned drivers handled in the kernel?  Someone, who doesn't seem
> to be the original author, has been ensuring the 1.x continues compiling
> in 2.6.27 despite the changes in interface.
> 
> JF Martinez
> 
> 

Hi JF,

Most webcam based driver development now a days happens within / on top of the 
gspcav2 framework, which has been merged into the 2.6.27 kernel. gspcav2 
already supports ov519 based cams, adding support to the existing driver for 
ov518 based cams should be easy, as those are mostly the same. The big 
difference is that ov518 based cams use a slightly non standard form of JPEG 
compression one of the first things that need doing is adding support for this 
compression to libv4l.

Would you be interested in working on this? Here are some references explaining 
how to get the latest gspca driver, and about the why, how and what of libv4l
http://hansdegoede.livejournal.com/6630.html
http://hansdegoede.livejournal.com/6317.html
http://hansdegoede.livejournal.com/3636.html

You can get the latest libv4l here:
http://people.atrpms.net/~hdegoede/libv4l-0.5.6.tar.gz

Regards,

Hans