Linux News Blog: Apr 7, 2009

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

How to Install Hercules Classic Silver Webcam in Ubuntu 8.10

This tutorial will explain you how to Install Hercules Classic Silver Webcam in Ubuntu.This how-to assumes that you have not previously tried to load the gspca from source. If you have, you will need to clean up all the drivers that were installed previously.

For starters, you will know you have this webcam if, when you run the command:

$lsusb | grep 06f8:3004

You get:

Bus 001 Device 003: ID 06f8:3004 Guillemot Corp.

Since we will be build from source, we need to make sure we have all the tools:

$ sudo aptitude install build-essential

First we need to have a place to download and keep the source code. In this case we create a directory /opt/src for this, but you can just as easily use another location

$ sudo mkdir /opt/src

$ sudo chmod 777 /opt/src

$ cd /opt/src

The gspca source lives in the v4l-dvb project. This project uses Mercurial to allow for easy updating of source. So let’s install Mercurial

$ sudo aptitude install mercurial

Using mercurial, download the most recent version of v4l-dvb:

$ hg clone http://linuxtv.org/hg/v4l-dvb

This will actively pull all the most recent source code for this project into a newly created directory called v4l-dvb. If you ever need to update the source just go to that directory and type

$ hg pull -u http://linuxtv.org/hg/v4l-dvb

Before we compile, we need to clean up any gspca stuff already on the system from the original install of 8.10. The drivers live in the specific folders for your kernel under /lib/modules. You can identify your kernel by

$ uname -r

and locate the /kernel/drivers/media/video/gspca folder. Or, you can use the below command to quickly remove them

$ sudo rm -r /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/media/video/gspca

There are some modules we need to make sure are not loaded as well before compiling

$ sudo rmmod videodev

Check to see if any gspca modules are currently loaded

$ lsmod | grep gspca

If any are found, remove them by name:

$ sudo rmmod (name of mod here)

Now we are ready to compile. Go into the v4l-dvb directory

$ cd v4l-dvb

And compile:

$ make

This will take about 10 mins or so and will compile all the v4l drivers including TV capture card drivers and other stuff. I’m sure there’s a way to only compile what we need, but I’m not smart enough to figure it out.

Once it’s done compiling, install it with

$ sudo make install

Restart your system using the following command

$ sudo reboot

Once it reboots, your camera should be recognized. Run:

$ dmesg

and look for something like:

gspca: main v2.4.0 registered
gspca: probing 06f8:3004
sonixj: Sonix chip id: 11
spca: probe ok
gspca: probing 06f8:3004
gspca: probing 06f8:3004
usbcore: registered new interface driver sonixj
sonixj: registered

If you tried to use Skype, You may got very colorful static instead of a picture of Yours Truly. Starting Skype with:

$ LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libv4l/v4l1compat.so skype

fixed it.

A way to start Skype from the menu instead of command line using the following procedure

$ sudo gedit /usr/local/bin/skype

and paste the following two lines into the new file

#!/bin/bash
LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libv4l/v4l1compat.so /usr/bin/skype

save, then make it executable

$ sudo chmod a+x /usr/local/bin/skype

That’s it!

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[Source: Linux Blogs2k - Posted by FreeAutoBlogger]

Open Source Hardware With Proper Voltage

Imagine being able to tweet your watts to others in an effort to lower your energy costs! What was once a bit out of reach is now quite doable thanks to these new Tweet-a-Watt kits. Considering how big of a heel you would appear to be if you were seen as the biggest “user”, this device provides what some might describe as necessary motivation to conserve power, whenever possible.

Provided to all as open source hardware, meaning it is open for all to take and expand on, the Tweet-a-meter concept is likely to catch on in a very big way amongst those who like to “tinker with their Twitter”…which may sound rather wrong, but we assure Lockergnome readers it is just an overabundance of T’s, nothing creepy despite how it might sound to the untrained ear.

So what does it cost to get started? Well first of all, you will need to get yourself a Kill-a-Watt device, which are said to run at about $20 USD. Then you will need to drop another $90 for the kit itself.

For those of you who feel this is a bit too rich for your blood, consider how much you could potentially be saving over the course of a year with vampire power usage when not thinking green? Just something to think about…

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[Source: Linux Blogs2k - Posted by FreeAutoBlogger]

Open Source Hardware With Proper Voltage

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[Source: Linux Blogs2k - Posted by FreeAutoBlogger]

small tip - Find where in Path a command is located - which

If for any reason you need to find where in the disk a command, you may use which this command will search on the PATH and display the directory where the command is located.

You may also look for a list of commands instead of a simple command, lets see some examples:

which ls

The output is: