Quickcam and various platforms

[ugly_411]

Hey guys.

I am in the process of writing a few tools for various astronomers
who use quckcams and webcams for star imaging. I wish to be able to
write up packages for generic linux, windows and Max panther. I have
found for windows the VideoCapture module, which I have had some
remote success with. I have seen much for Video4Linux for which I
have no experience (yet). SO my question is this:

Does anyone know how to access the cameras (USB specifically) in any
of these operating systems? I don't mind writing a new interface if
that's what it takes!

Thanks !

Ugly

[Diez B. Roggisch]

Hi

I am in the process of writing a few tools for various astronomers
who use quckcams and webcams for star imaging. I wish to be able to
write up packages for generic linux, windows and Max panther. I have
found for windows the VideoCapture module, which I have had some
remote success with. I have seen much for Video4Linux for which I
have no experience (yet). SO my question is this:

Does anyone know how to access the cameras (USB specifically) in any
of these operating systems? I don't mind writing a new interface if
that's what it takes!

I just had a very pleasant encounter with webcams on linux - I tried to use
gnomemeeting from a knoppix distribution, and while gnomeeting itself made
some trouble, the camera was detected correctly and e.g. gqcam can be used
to get images.

I even wrote a simple python-script to search for attached video-devices
using some translated C-code with ioctl-calls. Worked like a charm.

For the QuickCam I had to patch and recompile the kernel, as the module is
not in the tree, but then it worked as expected.

Diez

[PT]

> Does anyone know how to access the cameras (USB specifically) in any

of these operating systems? I don't mind writing a new interface if
that's what it takes!

See also PyCV:
http://members.tripod.com/~edcjones/pycode.html
and linux & os x resources (you'd have to create a python wrapper
using SWIG or Boost):
http://antonym.org/?q=node/view/20
http://webcam-osx.sourceforge.net/
http://www.ioxperts.com/dcam.html