Install SERP2 Webcam Driver

From Knowledge76

note, that this should also work for the SERP1 Microdia Camera (0c45:624f Microdia PC Camera (SN9C201 + OV9650) as well

Building driver from git

First make sure to install necessary build environment

sudo aptitude install linux-headers-`uname -r` git-core build-essential

Next grab a copy of the driver source from the git repository

git clone git://repo.or.cz/microdia.git
cd microdia

Build it using the following command

make

To install the driver so that it loads every boot do the following

sudo cp ./sn9c20x.ko /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/ubuntu/misc/media/
sudo depmod -a
sudo modprobe sn9c20x

This should load the module and set it to load automatically on every boot. To check that it has found your camera type the following

dmesg

Expected Output:

> sn9c20x: SN9C20X USB 2.0 Webcam - 0C45:624F plugged-in.
> sn9c20x: Detected OV9650 Sensor.
> sn9c20x: Webcam device 0C45:624F is now controlling video device /dev/video0
> sn9c20x: Using yuv420 output format
> usbcore: registered new interface driver sn9c20x
> sn9c20x: SN9C20x USB 2.0 Webcam Driver v2009.01 loaded

Installing libv4l

libv4l is needed for two reasons.

1. using it you can use older applications that only support the v4l1 API, sn9c20x only supports v4l2.
2. many applications such as skype do not natively support the video output formats that the sn9c20x driver uses.

Note: Intrepid and above have this library in their repositories. Its called libv4l-0. I still recommend getting and installing the latest version though.

Download the source from the following location: http://people.atrpms.net/~hdegoede/libv4l-0.5.9.tar.gz

Extract the source archive

tar xzvf libv4l-0.5.9.tar.gz

Compile and install libv4l

cd libv4l-0.5.9
make
make install PREFIX=/usr/

If your camera was detected properly when installing the driver and you have successfully built and installed libv4l the following commands should test the driver using mplayer

export LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libv4l/v4l2convert.so
mplayer tv:// -tv driver=v4l2:width=320:height=240:outfmt=bgr24:fps=30

Compile libv4l as 32bits

This step is only needed if you are using a 64bit version of ubuntu and need to use libv4l with a 32bit application such as skype whcih does not have a 64bit binary available for linux

First make sure to install multilib support for 32bit compilation

sudo aptitude install gcc-multilib libc6-i386 lib6-dev-i386

Next in the libv4l-0.5.9 directory type the following

gedit libv4l2/Makefile libv4l1/Makefile libv4lconvert/Makefile

In each of the three Makefiles you opened replace

CFLAGS := -g -O1

with

CFLAGS := -g -O1 -m32
LDFLAGS := -m32

then save them and exit gedit

Now to compile and and install the 32bit version do the following

make
make install PREFIX=/usr/ LIBDIR=/usr/lib32

This should give you a 32bit version of the library to use with 32bit applications