1Vaio Picturebook Motion Eye Camera Driver Readme 2------------------------------------------------ 3 Copyright (C) 2001 Stelian Pop <stelian.pop@fr.alcove.com>, Alc�ve 4 Copyright (C) 2000 Andrew Tridgell <tridge@samba.org> 5 6This driver enable the use of video4linux compatible applications with the 7Motion Eye camera. This driver requires the "Sony Vaio Programmable I/O 8Control Device" driver (which can be found in the "Character drivers" 9section of the kernel configuration utility) to be compiled and installed 10(using its "camera=1" parameter). 11 12It can do at maximum 30 fps @ 320x240 or 15 fps @ 640x480. 13 14Grabbing is supported in packed YUV colorspace only. 15 16MJPEG hardware grabbing is supported via a private API (see below). 17 18Driver options: 19--------------- 20 21Several options can be passed to the meye driver, either by adding them 22to /etc/modules.conf file, when the driver is compiled as a module, or 23by adding the following to the kernel command line (in your bootloader): 24 25 meye=gbuffers[,gbufsize[,video_nr]] 26 27where: 28 29 gbuffers: number of capture buffers, default is 2 (32 max) 30 31 gbufsize: size of each capture buffer, default is 614400 32 33 video_nr: video device to register (0 = /dev/video0, etc) 34 35Module use: 36----------- 37 38In order to automatically load the meye module on use, you can put those lines 39in your /etc/modules.conf file: 40 41 alias char-major-81 videodev 42 alias char-major-81-0 meye 43 options meye gbuffers=32 44 45Usage: 46------ 47 48 xawtv >= 3.49 (<http://bytesex.org/xawtv/>) 49 for display and uncompressed video capture: 50 51 xawtv -c /dev/video0 -geometry 640x480 52 or 53 xawtv -c /dev/video0 -geometry 320x240 54 55 motioneye (<http://www.alcove-labs.org/en/software/meye/>) 56 for getting ppm or jpg snapshots, mjpeg video 57 58Private API: 59------------ 60 61 The driver supports frame grabbing with the video4linux API, so 62 all video4linux tools (like xawtv) should work with this driver. 63 64 Besides the video4linux interface, the driver has a private interface 65 for accessing the Motion Eye extended parameters (camera sharpness, 66 agc, video framerate), the shapshot and the MJPEG capture facilities. 67 68 This interface consists of several ioctls (prototypes and structures 69 can be found in include/linux/meye.h): 70 71 MEYEIOC_G_PARAMS 72 MEYEIOC_S_PARAMS 73 Get and set the extended parameters of the motion eye camera. 74 The user should always query the current parameters with 75 MEYEIOC_G_PARAMS, change what he likes and then issue the 76 MEYEIOC_S_PARAMS call (checking for -EINVAL). The extended 77 parameters are described by the meye_params structure. 78 79 80 MEYEIOC_QBUF_CAPT 81 Queue a buffer for capture (the buffers must have been 82 obtained with a VIDIOCGMBUF call and mmap'ed by the 83 application). The argument to MEYEIOC_QBUF_CAPT is the 84 buffer number to queue (or -1 to end capture). The first 85 call to MEYEIOC_QBUF_CAPT starts the streaming capture. 86 87 MEYEIOC_SYNC 88 Takes as an argument the buffer number you want to sync. 89 This ioctl blocks until the buffer is filled and ready 90 for the application to use. It returns the buffer size. 91 92 MEYEIOC_STILLCAPT 93 MEYEIOC_STILLJCAPT 94 Takes a snapshot in an uncompressed or compressed jpeg format. 95 This ioctl blocks until the snapshot is done and returns (for 96 jpeg snapshot) the size of the image. The image data is 97 available from the first mmap'ed buffer. 98 99 Look at the 'motioneye' application code for an actual example. 100 101Bugs / Todo: 102------------ 103 104 - overlay output is not supported (although the camera is capable of). 105 (it should not be too hard to to it, provided we found how...) 106 107 - mjpeg hardware playback doesn't work (depends on overlay...) 108 109 - rewrite the driver to use some common video4linux API for snapshot 110 and mjpeg capture. Unfortunately, video4linux1 does not permit it, 111 the BUZ API seems to be targeted to TV cards only. The video4linux 2 112 API may be an option, if it goes into the kernel (maybe 2.5 113 material ?). 114