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Documentation / video4linux / meye.txt


Based on kernel version 4.7.2. Page generated on 2016-08-22 22:48 EST.

1	Vaio Picturebook Motion Eye Camera Driver Readme
2	------------------------------------------------
3		Copyright (C) 2001-2004 Stelian Pop <stelian@popies.net>
4		Copyright (C) 2001-2002 Alcôve <www.alcove.com>
5		Copyright (C) 2000 Andrew Tridgell <tridge@samba.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 @ 320x240 or 15 fps @ 640x480.
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		gbuffers:	number of capture buffers, default is 2 (32 max)
49	
50		gbufsize:	size of each capture buffer, default is 614400
51	
52		video_nr:	video device to register (0 = /dev/video0, etc)
53	
54	Module use:
55	-----------
56	
57	In order to automatically load the meye module on use, you can put those lines
58	in your /etc/modprobe.d/meye.conf file:
59	
60		alias char-major-81 videodev
61		alias char-major-81-0 meye
62		options meye gbuffers=32
63	
64	Usage:
65	------
66	
67		xawtv >= 3.49 (<http://bytesex.org/xawtv/>)
68			for display and uncompressed video capture:
69	
70				xawtv -c /dev/video0 -geometry 640x480
71					or
72				xawtv -c /dev/video0 -geometry 320x240
73	
74		motioneye (<http://popies.net/meye/>)
75			for getting ppm or jpg snapshots, mjpeg video
76	
77	Private API:
78	------------
79	
80		The driver supports frame grabbing with the video4linux API,
81		so all video4linux tools (like xawtv) should work with this driver.
82	
83		Besides the video4linux interface, the driver has a private interface
84		for accessing the Motion Eye extended parameters (camera sharpness,
85		agc, video framerate), the shapshot and the MJPEG capture facilities.
86	
87		This interface consists of several ioctls (prototypes and structures
88		can be found in include/linux/meye.h):
89	
90		MEYEIOC_G_PARAMS
91		MEYEIOC_S_PARAMS
92			Get and set the extended parameters of the motion eye camera.
93			The user should always query the current parameters with
94			MEYEIOC_G_PARAMS, change what he likes and then issue the
95			MEYEIOC_S_PARAMS call (checking for -EINVAL). The extended
96			parameters are described by the meye_params structure.
97	
98	
99		MEYEIOC_QBUF_CAPT
100			Queue a buffer for capture (the buffers must have been
101			obtained with a VIDIOCGMBUF call and mmap'ed by the
102			application). The argument to MEYEIOC_QBUF_CAPT is the
103			buffer number to queue (or -1 to end capture). The first
104			call to MEYEIOC_QBUF_CAPT starts the streaming capture.
105	
106		MEYEIOC_SYNC
107			Takes as an argument the buffer number you want to sync.
108			This ioctl blocks until the buffer is filled and ready
109			for the application to use. It returns the buffer size.
110	
111		MEYEIOC_STILLCAPT
112		MEYEIOC_STILLJCAPT
113			Takes a snapshot in an uncompressed or compressed jpeg format.
114			This ioctl blocks until the snapshot is done and returns (for
115			jpeg snapshot) the size of the image. The image data is
116			available from the first mmap'ed buffer.
117	
118		Look at the 'motioneye' application code for an actual example.
119	
120	Bugs / Todo:
121	------------
122	
123		- 'motioneye' still uses the meye private v4l1 API extensions.
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