…With Debian Linux! (and 2.6.12)

Logitech use a bunch of different chips depending on your camera. This is a recent (2007) camera, and the USB ID is  046d:08ae (from lsusb in usbutils.deb). I tried qc-linux and pwc (or the fork of it anyway) with no success.

I found that the GSPCA driver works. Just build it as a module and go
From http://mxhaard.free.fr/download.html. The link on the top for the SPCA5xx gives a list of supported cameras and USB ID’s.

Then I’m using FSWebCam for images: http://www.firestorm.cx/fswebcam/

I had to install libgd-noxpm-dev (.deb) to get fswebcam to compile. The XPM version requires a whole bunch of X libraries which is the whole reason for avoiding most of the other webcam utilities!

My actual command is:

fswebcam -l 5 -r 640×480 –font “/usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun-1.5.0.10/jre/lib/fonts/LucidaBrightRegular.ttf” –deinterlace –no-overlay –title “Hilton Front” –timestamp “`date`” –jpeg 70 –set depth=8 /var/www/webcam/1.jpg

And I’ll add -b to background it when I’m satisfied with it.

As you can see, it needs the location of a TrueType font to be able to do the writing on the banner on the bottom. Otherwise you just get an opaque purple bar on the bottom and an error about not being able to find / open the font on the console.

Oh by the way, it’s not a very good webcam for security monitoring (the focus is really limited). But at least it works, and it probably works really well if you actually use it on your notebook