what does easycam2 really do? and gspca vs uvcvideo

[H.S.]

Hello,

I came across some websites related to webcam detection and working on
Linux systems which describe a tool called "easycam2". Here are the main
ones:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/EasyCam
http://wiki.ubuntuusers.de/Easycam2
http://blognux.free.fr/

I do not understand the French and German web pages. Debian does not
seem to have this package. Easycam2 appears to make detection and
working of webcams a breeze. Apparently it detects what webcam is
connected and installs the relevant driver. Is this correct?

Anyone have experience with this?

And anybody know what is relationship between gspca and uvcvideo modules?

Finally, is easycam2 just a gui way of replacing module-assistant in
these webcam cases?

Thanks.

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[thveillon.debian]

H.S. a écrit :

> Hello,
>
> I came across some websites related to webcam detection and working on
> Linux systems which describe a tool called "easycam2". Here are the main
> ones:
> https://help.ubuntu.com/community/EasyCam
> http://wiki.ubuntuusers.de/Easycam2
> http://blognux.free.fr/
>
> I do not understand the French and German web pages. Debian does not
> seem to have this package. Easycam2 appears to make detection and
> working of webcams a breeze. Apparently it detects what webcam is
> connected and installs the relevant driver. Is this correct?
>
> Anyone have experience with this?
>
> And anybody know what is relationship between gspca and uvcvideo modules?
>
> Finally, is easycam2 just a gui way of replacing module-assistant in
> these webcam cases?
>
> Thanks.
>

Hi,

I read the French blog from the main author, looks to me it's a script
trying to detect which chipset the camera is using, and then installing
the right driver.
But for uvcvideo it's broken, since uvc shifted from svn to mercurial
and the compilation method changed accordingly.
uvcvideo is in the kernel starting with 2.6.26, gspca in 2.6.27 and
above, and all are available through module-assistant, so the script is
just to save the user the hassle of running a search with the usb ID,
and installing the driver.
>From the author blog I could understand that several drivers aren't
included in easycam, some are but installation process is broken, and
the author doesn't have much time to look into this (he is preparing a
challenging exam, French "concours", we are very fond of those...).

Finally it's intended for Ubuntu users, I didn't look into the code, the
main author says it's written in python and Glade provides the GUI.

So to answer your question, it seems to be more than a gui way to
replace m-a, the webcam detection module seems to be the important point
in easycam, on top of which is the collection of driver installation
routines.

Hope it helps.

Tom

[H. S.]

Yes, it is much more than I could understand from the main web pages. I knew the steps it asked you to follow, but did not know what was going on under the hood.

A friends is asking me if he should try this out. I wanted to see how it worked in Debian first. I did not find the package in Debian so that naturally raised a flag. I actually wanted to see what it did so that I can help my friend undo whatever it does on his Ubuntu machine if it does not work out for him.

Thanks for your comments.