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Linus Torvalds1da177e2005-04-16 15:20:36 -07001Vaio Picturebook Motion Eye Camera Driver Readme
2------------------------------------------------
3 Copyright (C) 2001-2004 Stelian Pop <stelian@popies.net>
John Anthony Kazos Jrbe2a6082007-05-09 08:50:42 +02004 Copyright (C) 2001-2002 AlcĂ´ve <www.alcove.com>
Linus Torvalds1da177e2005-04-16 15:20:36 -07005 Copyright (C) 2000 Andrew Tridgell <tridge@samba.org>
6
7This driver enable the use of video4linux compatible applications with the
malattia@linux.itcbefb762007-04-28 23:36:26 +09008Motion Eye camera. This driver requires the "Sony Laptop Extras" driver (which
9can be found in the "Misc devices" section of the kernel configuration utility)
10to be compiled and installed (using its "camera=1" parameter).
Linus Torvalds1da177e2005-04-16 15:20:36 -070011
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
18Hardware supported:
19-------------------
20
21This driver supports the 'second' version of the MotionEye camera :)
22
23The first version was connected directly on the video bus of the Neomagic
24video card and is unsupported.
25
26The second one, made by Kawasaki Steel is fully supported by this
27driver (PCI vendor/device is 0x136b/0xff01)
28
29The third one, present in recent (more or less last year) Picturebooks
30(C1M* models), is not supported. The manufacturer has given the specs
Matt LaPlantefff92892006-10-03 22:47:42 +020031to the developers under a NDA (which allows the development of a GPL
Linus Torvalds1da177e2005-04-16 15:20:36 -070032driver however), but things are not moving very fast (see
33http://r-engine.sourceforge.net/) (PCI vendor/device is 0x10cf/0x2011).
34
35There is a forth model connected on the USB bus in TR1* Vaio laptops.
36This camera is not supported at all by the current driver, in fact
37little information if any is available for this camera
38(USB vendor/device is 0x054c/0x0107).
39
40Driver options:
41---------------
42
43Several options can be passed to the meye driver using the standard
44module argument syntax (<param>=<value> when passing the option to the
45module or meye.<param>=<value> on the kernel boot line when meye is
46statically linked into the kernel). Those options are:
47
Linus Torvalds1da177e2005-04-16 15:20:36 -070048 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
54Module use:
55-----------
56
57In order to automatically load the meye module on use, you can put those lines
Lucas De Marchi970e2482012-03-30 13:37:16 -070058in your /etc/modprobe.d/meye.conf file:
Linus Torvalds1da177e2005-04-16 15:20:36 -070059
60 alias char-major-81 videodev
61 alias char-major-81-0 meye
62 options meye gbuffers=32
63
64Usage:
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
77Private API:
78------------
79
Hans Verkuile4ea6442010-12-25 07:15:22 -030080 The driver supports frame grabbing with the video4linux API,
81 so all video4linux tools (like xawtv) should work with this driver.
Linus Torvalds1da177e2005-04-16 15:20:36 -070082
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
120Bugs / Todo:
121------------
122
Linus Torvalds1da177e2005-04-16 15:20:36 -0700123 - 'motioneye' still uses the meye private v4l1 API extensions.