Dec 26, 2007

Linux Experts: Please help me get a camera working in GNU/Linux

Device:
Small USB Camera for Kids
Make: Sakar International
Model: 16380

lsusb from Ubuntu Linux shows:
Bus 001 Device 004: ID 0979:0227 Jeilin Technology Corp., Ltd

Output from gphoto2 (none):
userkid@edubuntu-mach:~$ gphoto2 --auto-detect
Model Port
----------------------------------------------------------
userkid@edubuntu-mach:~$


I've tried loading different camera models with gphoto2 but no luck.

Could I ask you for any suggestions as to how I might get this to work?

Also, is there an easy way to list out what device IDs the camera names from 'gphoto2 --list-cameras' match up to?

Thanks SO MUCH for all that you do for Linux!!

Regards,

Shannon VanWagner
http://healthysystem.blogspot.com
Posted by Shannon VanWagner at 7:29 PM

7 comments:

  1. You might want to post this to http://ubuntuforums.org

    You'll probably find better help. Good luck.
    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks for the help Daengbo!! I've posted this to the ubuntuforums.org at:
    http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=4020804#post4020804

    Cheers!
    Shannon
    ReplyDelete
  3. This is from the Linux USB manager for the device id of the camera.

    Subject: Re: Hi there, I was wondering if you could help me get a camera to work in Linux
    To: Shannon VanWagner

    Doesn't look good;

    http://www.qbik.ch/usb/devices/showdev.php?id=4262
    ReplyDelete
  4. I've since emailed the Sakar camera people:


    From: Shannon VanWagner
    Subject: Fwd: Hi there, I was wondering if you could help me get a camera to work in Linux
    To: digitalcameras(at)sakar.com; sales(at)sakar.com


    Hi there,

    we are Linux users and would like to be able to get pictures off our Sakar Kidz Cam Model 16380.

    Could you please either

    a.) Provide Linux drivers for this camera

    and/or

    b.) Share some of the code used in development of the driver so that others can create a Linux driver for this camera. Apparently it's currently possible to "get the raw data out, but it is compressed and the compression algorithm is a new one." See this website for more information:

    http://www.qbik.ch/usb/devices/showdev.php?id=4262


    I'm trying to draw big attention to having Linux drivers for this device, please help!!

    See the articles I've created online here:
    http://digg.com/linux_unix/Hoping_this_works_Please_help_get_a_camera_working_in_Linux/who
    http://healthysystem.blogspot.com/2007/12/please-help-me-get-camera-working-in.html
    http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=4020804#post4020804
    ReplyDelete
  5. I've sent an email to them myself.

    From past experience however, I expect Linux support will eventually be added through reverse-engineering alone, with no help from the camera designers.
    ReplyDelete
  6. Did you ever get anything figured out with this camera?
    ReplyDelete
  7. Professor Theodore Kilgore from Alabama has been working on a driver for this camera. As of about 6 months ago, the Professor had me download his driver for the camera, and the driver lets download files from the camera. But since the pictures are stored in an encrypted format on the storage media of the camera, there is still work to be done to decrypt the picture files into a viewable format (this is the last I heard anyway).

    The problem is that the company who makes this camera hasn't made it easy to download pictures from the camera by either a.) sharing the details of the encrypted storage format so GNU/Linux people can make a driver and/or b.) using standard storage formats that are already recognized by GNU/Linux(and other OSes).

    Once I find the camera (it's in my house somewhere), I'll look into this again.
    ReplyDelete

Thanks for commenting. Comments are moderated by the blog owner and will appear once approved. Need to email me directly? Go to http://shannonvanwagner.com/email-me.php

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)