/* README for libgphoto2/camlibs/sonix camera library * * Copyright (C) 2005 Theodore Kilgore <kilgota@auburn.edu> * * This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or * modify it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public * License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either * version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. * * This library is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, * but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of * MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU * Lesser General Public License for more details. * * You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public * License along with this library; if not, write to the * Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, * Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA */ This library supports fully the still-camera functions of several cameras which use the sn9c2028 chip from Sonix (Vendor ID 0x0c45). Differences in the functions and features of the known cameras can be distinguished through the USB Product number, and also by a four-digit hexadecimal string passed by the camera during initialization -- apparently a firmware version number and/or an identification number for the video sensor. If you have a Sonix sn9c2028 camera which returns a number not listed in sonix.c, then your camera may or may not work with this code. How would I know? Please inform if you get a different ID number! Here we give a brief description both of currently-supported cameras and of the supported gphoto2 functions for each. Vivicam 3350b: Uses an OV7630 sensor. Produces a maximum resolution of 640x480 and an option to use 320x240. The photos are all compressed. The compression scheme is lossy. The decompression algorithm originates, I understand, in the work of Bertrik Sikkens for the sn9c102 cameras. In the macam project for MacOS-X camera support(webcam-osx project on Sourceforge), the decompression algorithm for the sn9c2028 cameras was developed by Mattias Krauss and adapted for use with the Vivitar Vivicam 3350B in particular by Harald Ruda <hrx at users.sourceforge.net>. Harald brought to my attention the work already done in the macam project, pointed out that it is GPL code, and invited me to have a look. Thanks, Harald. The decompression algorithm used here is similar to what is used in the macam driver, but is considerably streamlined and improved. It seems to work perfectly. Brightness and/or gamma do sometimes need to be adjusted with a photo editor such as Gimp, ImageMagick, or xv, especially for photos taken in dim light. Features of the camera include the ability to delete all photos. The "delete last" function and the "capture-image" function, which will work for some other Sonix sn9c2028 cameras and are thus supported in this library, do not seem to work with the my Vivicam 3350B and are therefore disabled for this camera. These cameras can all shoot "movie clips" which are saved as AVI files. Webcam functionality uses isochronous transfer; thus it lies outside the scope of libgphoto2 and is therefore not supported here. DC31VC: Yet another camera which the macam driver also supports has been listed here as a supported camera. It apparently uses 352x288 and 176x144 resolution settings. I know of it only second hand, have not personally tested it, and would appreciate any reports about it (I suspect it is similar to the Sakar Digital Keychain camera). Sakar Digital Keychain #11199: This camera does not use data compression. It will hold 18 photos at 352x288 resolution, and 70 photos (or a clip containing at most 70 frames) at 176x144 resolution, or any combination of these which does not fill up the camera. Clips are processed as AVI files. This camera also supports gphoto2 --capture-image, which will cause a photo to be taken and stored among the photos on the camera for later download (the capture dimensions are always 352x288). The photo which one has just shot can of course be downloaded immediately using gphoto2 -p (its number, which will be the last taken) and, if desired, can be deleted immediately afterwards using gphoto2 -d (its number) which this camera also permits (unlike the Vivicam 3350b). Mini-Shotz ms350: This camera has 640x480 and 320x240 resolution settings. Its features are otherwise quite similar to those of the Sakar Digital Keychain #11199, except that it exclusively uses the compressed mode. Genius Smart 300: This camera has 640x480 and 320x240 resolution settings. Its features are otherwise quite similar to those of the Sakar Digital Keychain #11199 and the Mini-Shotz ms350, except that it uses compressed mode for multiframe shooting, but offers both compressed and uncompressed modes as options for still photos. It does not support gphoto2 --capture-image. It does support deletion of the last entry on the camera. GUI frontends: Libgphoto2 , of course, permits the use of a GUI frontend as well as the gphoto2 command-line utility. I have tested my two cameras with gtkam and with flphoto. Both of them work, with the following provisos: -- There is an unresolved problem with gtkam, when the Sakar Digital Keychain camera is hooked up and gtkam is started. The LED display starts to move immediately and keeps on. The LED activity does not stop when gtkam is exited, but only on camera disconnect from the computer. This phenomenon may be quite harmless, but who knows? It obviously means that some kind of background activity is taking place inside the camera. This LED activity does not occur if the gphoto2 command line or the gphoto2 shell or flphoto are used. (UPDATE: A workaround patch has been applied, which seems to fix this, as of 08/17/06) -- flphoto will give a message when asked to save an AVI file, that it cannot put the AVI file into an "album." Well, perhaps not. But not to worry. It will save the AVI file anyway, even while protesting. (Most recent revision of this file is on 12/18/2007)
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