USB Camera?

[Guest Andy From Ireland]

:D I am intruiged about this setting on the Advent VEGA: "enable usb camera" - can anyone shed light on this please does it mean a USB camera can be plugged into the VEGA USB socket and be used?

[Guest Anton2k]

:D I am intruiged about this setting on the Advent VEGA: "enable usb camera" - can anyone shed light on this please does it mean a USB camera can be plugged into the VEGA USB socket and be used?

Hi Andy, i know that the vega supports usb host mode meaning it can take any thing that is usb i.e. keyboard mouse camera etc, if you have the right rom installed like Corvus5 that is.

What i would do is search for apps on the market like usb camera etc i am sure some one out there has made and app for an external usb camera. Btw just because u can plug it in etc and the lights on the camera light up it dont mean its workin, the android kernel must have the driver support in order to use it aswell. (just having an app wont work u got have a camera that is supported by android, done a little google search there cant seem to find any thing. w8 a month or so more i am sure with this honeycomb android tablet frenzi that is going on just now one is bound to pop up)

Regards Anton.

[Guest trevor432990]

:D I am intruiged about this setting on the Advent VEGA: "enable usb camera" - can anyone shed light on this please does it mean a USB camera can be plugged into the VEGA USB socket and be used?

Hi there ... if you check through topic you'll find that some cameras seem to be working without modification to the Vega but only to a limited extent. As Anton said you'll need to find an app which utilises them for any real purpose. :D

[Guest Fire Ant]

Andy, you didn't mention what USB camera you're trying to use. You know the kernel of Android is a modified version of Linux. Therefore, any device driver available on Linux can be used on Android too. The thing is that in Linux you can select what drivers to compile and distribute with the kernel. Apparently, most ROM developers prefer to distribute minimum number of drivers to reduce the size of the ROM, saving a considerable amount of space probably. If you're a programmer and know or willing to learn how to compile the kernel you can compile the drivers you need yourself and just copy on the SD card and using a simple command:

insmode [driver.ko]

load the driver (module).

If you're familiar with Linux, and have a Linux machine, just connect the USB device (camera) to the computer and then run this command:

dmesg

and do the same on Android. If you get exactly the same lines related to the device, you've got the driver on Android. If not, then on the Linux machine you see what drivers are loaded and need to compile. Or simply can ask the creator of the Android ROM you use to compile those modules for you. Most likely they can help you with that. If you use a ROM that is based on the kernel by BuzzBumbleBee I can help you with compiling drivers. Corvus has already compiled some of the requested drivers for his ROMs.

Regarding the issue of some apps working with just the integrated camera, I found that if I connect a USB camera and reboot the tablet, then the /dev/video0 is not created. And then I load the modules for my camera (Sony PlayStation 3 Eye) then the first camera is the USB one, and all the camera apps (including the default app) use this as the default camera.

HTH

[Guest Andy From Ireland]

thanks all repliers, the usb camera i am going to try is an Advent usb camera i bought from currys, i have a feeling its only compatible with windows and not linux but i will try it out tomorrow and get back, i have the vega dock so i might try plugging the usb camera into the dock usb socket. would be cool if it just works :)

Edited June 28, 2011 by Andy From Ireland