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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
48 forcev4l1: force use of V4L1 API instead of V4L2
49
50 gbuffers: number of capture buffers, default is 2 (32 max)
51
52 gbufsize: size of each capture buffer, default is 614400
53
54 video_nr: video device to register (0 = /dev/video0, etc)
55
56Module use:
57-----------
58
59In order to automatically load the meye module on use, you can put those lines
60in your /etc/modprobe.conf file:
61
62 alias char-major-81 videodev
63 alias char-major-81-0 meye
64 options meye gbuffers=32
65
66Usage:
67------
68
69 xawtv >= 3.49 (<http://bytesex.org/xawtv/>)
70 for display and uncompressed video capture:
71
72 xawtv -c /dev/video0 -geometry 640x480
73 or
74 xawtv -c /dev/video0 -geometry 320x240
75
76 motioneye (<http://popies.net/meye/>)
77 for getting ppm or jpg snapshots, mjpeg video
78
79Private API:
80------------
81
82 The driver supports frame grabbing with the video4linux API
83 (either v4l1 or v4l2), so all video4linux tools (like xawtv)
84 should work with this driver.
85
86 Besides the video4linux interface, the driver has a private interface
87 for accessing the Motion Eye extended parameters (camera sharpness,
88 agc, video framerate), the shapshot and the MJPEG capture facilities.
89
90 This interface consists of several ioctls (prototypes and structures
91 can be found in include/linux/meye.h):
92
93 MEYEIOC_G_PARAMS
94 MEYEIOC_S_PARAMS
95 Get and set the extended parameters of the motion eye camera.
96 The user should always query the current parameters with
97 MEYEIOC_G_PARAMS, change what he likes and then issue the
98 MEYEIOC_S_PARAMS call (checking for -EINVAL). The extended
99 parameters are described by the meye_params structure.
100
101
102 MEYEIOC_QBUF_CAPT
103 Queue a buffer for capture (the buffers must have been
104 obtained with a VIDIOCGMBUF call and mmap'ed by the
105 application). The argument to MEYEIOC_QBUF_CAPT is the
106 buffer number to queue (or -1 to end capture). The first
107 call to MEYEIOC_QBUF_CAPT starts the streaming capture.
108
109 MEYEIOC_SYNC
110 Takes as an argument the buffer number you want to sync.
111 This ioctl blocks until the buffer is filled and ready
112 for the application to use. It returns the buffer size.
113
114 MEYEIOC_STILLCAPT
115 MEYEIOC_STILLJCAPT
116 Takes a snapshot in an uncompressed or compressed jpeg format.
117 This ioctl blocks until the snapshot is done and returns (for
118 jpeg snapshot) the size of the image. The image data is
119 available from the first mmap'ed buffer.
120
121 Look at the 'motioneye' application code for an actual example.
122
123Bugs / Todo:
124------------
125
126 - the driver could be much cleaned up by removing the v4l1 support.
127 However, this means all v4l1-only applications will stop working.
128
129 - 'motioneye' still uses the meye private v4l1 API extensions.