Based on kernel version 2.6.26. Page generated on 2008-07-16 21:13 EST.
1 Vaio Picturebook Motion Eye Camera Driver Readme 2 ------------------------------------------------ 3 Copyright (C) 2001-2004 Stelian Pop <stelian[AT]popies[DOT]net> 4 Copyright (C) 2001-2002 Alcôve <www.alcove.com> 5 Copyright (C) 2000 Andrew Tridgell <tridge[AT]samba[DOT]org> 6 7 This driver enable the use of video4linux compatible applications with the 8 Motion Eye camera. This driver requires the "Sony Laptop Extras" driver (which 9 can be found in the "Misc devices" section of the kernel configuration utility) 10 to be compiled and installed (using its "camera=1" parameter). 11 12 It can do at maximum 30 fps [AT] 320x240 or 15 fps @ 640x480[DOT] 13 14 Grabbing is supported in packed YUV colorspace only. 15 16 MJPEG hardware grabbing is supported via a private API (see below). 17 18 Hardware supported: 19 ------------------- 20 21 This driver supports the 'second' version of the MotionEye camera :) 22 23 The first version was connected directly on the video bus of the Neomagic 24 video card and is unsupported. 25 26 The second one, made by Kawasaki Steel is fully supported by this 27 driver (PCI vendor/device is 0x136b/0xff01) 28 29 The third one, present in recent (more or less last year) Picturebooks 30 (C1M* models), is not supported. The manufacturer has given the specs 31 to the developers under a NDA (which allows the development of a GPL 32 driver however), but things are not moving very fast (see 33 http://r-engine.sourceforge.net/) (PCI vendor/device is 0x10cf/0x2011). 34 35 There is a forth model connected on the USB bus in TR1* Vaio laptops. 36 This camera is not supported at all by the current driver, in fact 37 little information if any is available for this camera 38 (USB vendor/device is 0x054c/0x0107). 39 40 Driver options: 41 --------------- 42 43 Several options can be passed to the meye driver using the standard 44 module argument syntax (<param>=<value> when passing the option to the 45 module or meye.<param>=<value> on the kernel boot line when meye is 46 statically linked into the kernel). Those options are: 47 48 forcev4l1: force use of V4L1 API instead of V4L2 49 50 gbuffers: number of capture buffers, default is 2 (32 max) 51 52 gbufsize: size of each capture buffer, default is 614400 53 54 video_nr: video device to register (0 = /dev/video0, etc) 55 56 Module use: 57 ----------- 58 59 In order to automatically load the meye module on use, you can put those lines 60 in your /etc/modprobe.conf file: 61 62 alias char-major-81 videodev 63 alias char-major-81-0 meye 64 options meye gbuffers=32 65 66 Usage: 67 ------ 68 69 xawtv >= 3.49 (<http://bytesex.org/xawtv/>) 70 for display and uncompressed video capture: 71 72 xawtv -c /dev/video0 -geometry 640x480 73 or 74 xawtv -c /dev/video0 -geometry 320x240 75 76 motioneye (<http://popies.net/meye/>) 77 for getting ppm or jpg snapshots, mjpeg video 78 79 Private API: 80 ------------ 81 82 The driver supports frame grabbing with the video4linux API 83 (either v4l1 or v4l2), so all video4linux tools (like xawtv) 84 should work with this driver. 85 86 Besides the video4linux interface, the driver has a private interface 87 for accessing the Motion Eye extended parameters (camera sharpness, 88 agc, video framerate), the shapshot and the MJPEG capture facilities. 89 90 This interface consists of several ioctls (prototypes and structures 91 can be found in include/linux/meye.h): 92 93 MEYEIOC_G_PARAMS 94 MEYEIOC_S_PARAMS 95 Get and set the extended parameters of the motion eye camera. 96 The user should always query the current parameters with 97 MEYEIOC_G_PARAMS, change what he likes and then issue the 98 MEYEIOC_S_PARAMS call (checking for -EINVAL). The extended 99 parameters are described by the meye_params structure. 100 101 102 MEYEIOC_QBUF_CAPT 103 Queue a buffer for capture (the buffers must have been 104 obtained with a VIDIOCGMBUF call and mmap'ed by the 105 application). The argument to MEYEIOC_QBUF_CAPT is the 106 buffer number to queue (or -1 to end capture). The first 107 call to MEYEIOC_QBUF_CAPT starts the streaming capture. 108 109 MEYEIOC_SYNC 110 Takes as an argument the buffer number you want to sync. 111 This ioctl blocks until the buffer is filled and ready 112 for the application to use. It returns the buffer size. 113 114 MEYEIOC_STILLCAPT 115 MEYEIOC_STILLJCAPT 116 Takes a snapshot in an uncompressed or compressed jpeg format. 117 This ioctl blocks until the snapshot is done and returns (for 118 jpeg snapshot) the size of the image. The image data is 119 available from the first mmap'ed buffer. 120 121 Look at the 'motioneye' application code for an actual example. 122 123 Bugs / Todo: 124 ------------ 125 126 - the driver could be much cleaned up by removing the v4l1 support. 127 However, this means all v4l1-only applications will stop working. 128 129 - 'motioneye' still uses the meye private v4l1 API extensions.