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It is possible to plug and use a webcam on the Freerunner. This is a very rough list of the steps required to do so with Debian Lenny installed.
The webcam used to perform this example is a Philips SPC620NC, using the [UVC] driver.
The method described here is still rather ugly, feel free to improve it.
To be safe, you just first ensure the webcam works on a regular PC, and Linux in particular. This will minimise the problems you are likely to face (though it may not eliminate them altogether). The regular documentation applies:
The 2.6.24 kernel is provided without video input support enabled. There is a way to add the necessary modules without recompiling everything:
Basically, look for "Device drivers", "Multimedia devices", then enable "Video For Linux", "Video For Linux API 1", "Video For Linux API 1 compatible Layer", "Video capture adapters" as modules. If the driver for your webcam is found in the kernel already, also enable it there.
The errors encountered while loading modules can be obtained with the "dmesg" command. They are typically also logged in /var/log/messages.
To obtain and compile the latest source tree for the driver:
And if all goes well:
In our case, the relevant device node was not created automatically. Here's how to do so:
The Freerunner needs to run in USB host mode in order to do this. A special USB cable (or gender changer) is necessary to do so.
Again, you can use the command "dmesg" to verify that the camera is properly recognized.
A good webcam test application is luvcview. You can install and test it this way: