vgrabbj gecius.de

Warning

Use at your own risk. Up to 0.9.3 does not properly work if not all libs (think optional=required!) are available. Got a hint by a user - use 0.9.4!

Latest

Latest version is 0.9.6

If you're in debian, too, find it as Debian-Package.

Purpose

vgrabbj is designed to take input, process it and output it. I know that sounds familiar...

It takes a v4l (not v4l2!) device as input to put it into an jpeg, pnm, or png file.
You can add a timestamp into the image. You can also make it automagically upload it to
your website via ftp.

Some of the options are made solely for users. I don't have any testing facilities to
see if it works. Let me know. Share your experience with me. Let me improve it. Rant.
Whatever, but: mail me at jens (at) gecius (dot) de. User devel deleted because development stopped.

Problems sending mail to jens

You've got a problem.

Story

See README (below) or inside the archive.

Can Do

Watch coffeemachine.
Take pictures off v4l-devices which provide RGB24, RGB32, YUYV, YUV420, or YUV420P.

Can not Do

Cook Coffee.
Set your framegrabber-tv-card to an appropriate channel/norm. Most webcams don't need it.
May come later.

Needs

Libraries. jpeg, png, ftplib, z, and freetype (v1, libttf) - all with headers. If you
don't have them, get them pre-packaged for your favourite distro or originals here:

Libjpeg,
Libpng,
Ftplib, optional,
Libz,
Freetype, optional,

If you don't have the optionals at compile time, doesn't matter, but then you do not
have the timestamp feature. Same applies for the ftplib.

Follow the instructions inside the Lib-archives to install them.

Further Readings

CHANGES,
README,
TODO, and the
archive. Italian How-To (thanks to Francesco)

Very latest

Get it from Sourceforge.

More for webcam

Recently, c't had an interesting project about an USB chip (Cypress Cy7C63001-IO2) preprogrammed by AK-Modul-Bus GmbH to control one 8bit and one 4bit port. c't used it to control a motor with a webcam mounted on it. Linux driver=nil, as usual. But there was something for another elektor project (see tilp project). I modified it heavily (my first kernel-development) and it works, but only fundamentally (is work in heavy progress). Try it to take control of the motor with linux!

My webcam is mounted on a 'grillmotor' like c't did it, but webcontrol is not enabled, yet.

The 0.2 tarball is available now. Here is the old 0.1 version.

If you need to tweak your Philips WebCam in detail (auto white balance, shutter, etc.), take a look at the setpwc project.

Archive

Easy, http access to the whole directory.

Take a look

Webcam offline because it broke.

Linux USB
Philips device driver/USB
My starting point: vgrabber.c
W3CAM - a cgi for webcams

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2023.07.09