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Vaio Picturebook Motion Eye Camera Driver Readme

------------------------------------------------

        Copyright (C) 2001-2003 Stelian Pop 

        Copyright (C) 2001-2002 Alcôve 

        Copyright (C) 2000 Andrew Tridgell 

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, either by adding them

to /etc/modules.conf file, when the driver is compiled as a module, or

by adding the following to the kernel command line (in your bootloader):

        meye=gbuffers[,gbufsize[,video_nr]]

where:

        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/modules.conf file:

        alias char-major-81 videodev

        alias char-major-81-0 meye

        options meye gbuffers=32

Usage:

------

        xawtv >= 3.49 ()

                for display and uncompressed video capture:

                        xawtv -c /dev/video0 -geometry 640x480

                                or

                        xawtv -c /dev/video0 -geometry 320x240

        motioneye ()

                for getting ppm or jpg snapshots, mjpeg video

Private API:

------------

        The driver supports frame grabbing with the video4linux API, 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:

------------

        - overlay output is not supported (although the camera is capable of).

                (it should not be too hard to to it, provided we found how...)

        - mjpeg hardware playback doesn't work (depends on overlay...)

        - rewrite the driver to use some common video4linux API for snapshot

          and mjpeg capture. Unfortunately, video4linux1 does not permit it,

          the BUZ API seems to be targeted to TV cards only. The video4linux 2

          API may be an option, if it goes into the kernel (maybe 2.5

          material ?).