webcam support/hardware compatibility list

[Nigel Henry]

On Wednesday 31 January 2007 21:35, David L wrote:
> I'd like to buy a webcam that has good support in fedora,
> preferably without any kernel patches/proprietary drivers.
> Any suggestions?

I may as well start this off. I hadn't been bothered about a webcam, but my 
local Aldi supermarket had some webcams reduced from 25€ to 5€ so I went for 
one. It was a Lifetec LT9388 using the ov511 driver, and amazingly is 
supported in Linux. I have no problem capturing images with this using 
"Camstream", but Kopete is a bit hit and miss. You need KDE 3.5 to have the 
correct Kopete version to use the webcam. I have little contact with my 2 
contacts on Kopete, so havn't been able to see if I can send webcam images. 
Yoy do have a preview of the webcam image on Kopete, but have to admit that 
this is unreliable. Sometimes I just see a green background with some sort of 
logo on it which is a bit weird, and other times the webcam image is there, 
but very dark, and nothing that I do can get it brighter. These results are 
on FC5, Kubuntu, and Debian Etch.

I also have a TV card using the bttv driver, and normally use Xawtv to watch 
the TV. Xawtv will also display webcam images, but I only was able to view 
them in greyscale. After a bit of Googling I found a fix. Add an option 
to /etc/modprobe.conf, as below.
options ov511 force_palette=15

Webcams appear to have some problems. As I've said, Camstream will capture 
images fine, but the problems seem to be with using the webcam, and instant 
messaging. Kopete from KDE 3.5 and onwards is supposed to work, and also aMSN 
is supposed to work.

I've put some links below.

http://alpha.dyndns.org/ov511/cameras.html
http://webcam.sourceforge.net/
http://tomatlab.videontv.org/webcam/webcamlinux.html
http://www.seismo.ethz.ch/linux/webcam.html
http://www.linux.com/howtos/Webcam-HOWTO/framegrabbers.shtml

Thats about all I can remember for now.

Nigel.