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authorLinus Torvalds <torvalds@ppc970.osdl.org>2005-04-16 15:20:36 -0700
committerLinus Torvalds <torvalds@ppc970.osdl.org>2005-04-16 15:20:36 -0700
commit1da177e4c3f41524e886b7f1b8a0c1fc7321cac2 (patch)
tree0bba044c4ce775e45a88a51686b5d9f90697ea9d /Documentation/video4linux/meye.txt
Linux-2.6.12-rc2
Initial git repository build. I'm not bothering with the full history, even though we have it. We can create a separate "historical" git archive of that later if we want to, and in the meantime it's about 3.2GB when imported into git - space that would just make the early git days unnecessarily complicated, when we don't have a lot of good infrastructure for it. Let it rip!
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+Vaio Picturebook Motion Eye Camera Driver Readme
+------------------------------------------------
+ Copyright (C) 2001-2004 Stelian Pop <stelian@popies.net>
+ Copyright (C) 2001-2002 Alcôve <www.alcove.com>
+ Copyright (C) 2000 Andrew Tridgell <tridge@samba.org>
+
+This driver enable the use of video4linux compatible applications with the
+Motion Eye camera. This driver requires the "Sony Vaio Programmable I/O
+Control Device" driver (which can be found in the "Character drivers"
+section of the kernel configuration utility) to be compiled and installed
+(using its "camera=1" parameter).
+
+It can do at maximum 30 fps @ 320x240 or 15 fps @ 640x480.
+
+Grabbing is supported in packed YUV colorspace only.
+
+MJPEG hardware grabbing is supported via a private API (see below).
+
+Hardware supported:
+-------------------
+
+This driver supports the 'second' version of the MotionEye camera :)
+
+The first version was connected directly on the video bus of the Neomagic
+video card and is unsupported.
+
+The second one, made by Kawasaki Steel is fully supported by this
+driver (PCI vendor/device is 0x136b/0xff01)
+
+The third one, present in recent (more or less last year) Picturebooks
+(C1M* models), is not supported. The manufacturer has given the specs
+to the developers under a NDA (which allows the develoment of a GPL
+driver however), but things are not moving very fast (see
+http://r-engine.sourceforge.net/) (PCI vendor/device is 0x10cf/0x2011).
+
+There is a forth model connected on the USB bus in TR1* Vaio laptops.
+This camera is not supported at all by the current driver, in fact
+little information if any is available for this camera
+(USB vendor/device is 0x054c/0x0107).
+
+Driver options:
+---------------
+
+Several options can be passed to the meye driver using the standard
+module argument syntax (<param>=<value> when passing the option to the
+module or meye.<param>=<value> on the kernel boot line when meye is
+statically linked into the kernel). Those options are:
+
+ forcev4l1: force use of V4L1 API instead of V4L2
+
+ gbuffers: number of capture buffers, default is 2 (32 max)
+
+ gbufsize: size of each capture buffer, default is 614400
+
+ video_nr: video device to register (0 = /dev/video0, etc)
+
+Module use:
+-----------
+
+In order to automatically load the meye module on use, you can put those lines
+in your /etc/modprobe.conf file:
+
+ alias char-major-81 videodev
+ alias char-major-81-0 meye
+ options meye gbuffers=32
+
+Usage:
+------
+
+ xawtv >= 3.49 (<http://bytesex.org/xawtv/>)
+ for display and uncompressed video capture:
+
+ xawtv -c /dev/video0 -geometry 640x480
+ or
+ xawtv -c /dev/video0 -geometry 320x240
+
+ motioneye (<http://popies.net/meye/>)
+ for getting ppm or jpg snapshots, mjpeg video
+
+Private API:
+------------
+
+ The driver supports frame grabbing with the video4linux API
+ (either v4l1 or v4l2), so all video4linux tools (like xawtv)
+ should work with this driver.
+
+ Besides the video4linux interface, the driver has a private interface
+ for accessing the Motion Eye extended parameters (camera sharpness,
+ agc, video framerate), the shapshot and the MJPEG capture facilities.
+
+ This interface consists of several ioctls (prototypes and structures
+ can be found in include/linux/meye.h):
+
+ MEYEIOC_G_PARAMS
+ MEYEIOC_S_PARAMS
+ Get and set the extended parameters of the motion eye camera.
+ The user should always query the current parameters with
+ MEYEIOC_G_PARAMS, change what he likes and then issue the
+ MEYEIOC_S_PARAMS call (checking for -EINVAL). The extended
+ parameters are described by the meye_params structure.
+
+
+ MEYEIOC_QBUF_CAPT
+ Queue a buffer for capture (the buffers must have been
+ obtained with a VIDIOCGMBUF call and mmap'ed by the
+ application). The argument to MEYEIOC_QBUF_CAPT is the
+ buffer number to queue (or -1 to end capture). The first
+ call to MEYEIOC_QBUF_CAPT starts the streaming capture.
+
+ MEYEIOC_SYNC
+ Takes as an argument the buffer number you want to sync.
+ This ioctl blocks until the buffer is filled and ready
+ for the application to use. It returns the buffer size.
+
+ MEYEIOC_STILLCAPT
+ MEYEIOC_STILLJCAPT
+ Takes a snapshot in an uncompressed or compressed jpeg format.
+ This ioctl blocks until the snapshot is done and returns (for
+ jpeg snapshot) the size of the image. The image data is
+ available from the first mmap'ed buffer.
+
+ Look at the 'motioneye' application code for an actual example.
+
+Bugs / Todo:
+------------
+
+ - the driver could be much cleaned up by removing the v4l1 support.
+ However, this means all v4l1-only applications will stop working.
+
+ - 'motioneye' still uses the meye private v4l1 API extensions.