Philips USB Webcam Driver for Linux

Free Philips USB Webcam driver for Linux that supports VGA resolution, newer kernels and replacing the old pwcx module.

Latest release: 10.0.12-rc1
Latest snapshot: spc900nc support

This is a fork of the discontinuity pwc driver made by Nemosoft Unv. You don’t need binary module with this driver, however decompression is supported for big resolution (640x480). The driver is designed for Linux 2.6, patches for 2.4 is not tested. I’ll try to produce update for the 2.4 kernel.

If you don’t want to patches your kernel, just grab the tarball, and do a make to build the module (or better read the INSTALL.en). The module is ~80kbytes long, and allocate ~60kbytes of kernel memory for decompressor. Add some bits for buffering images and you will have a idea of the kernel size.

Patches modify the following files:

 Documentation/usb/philips.txt          |  236 +++
 drivers/usb/media/Kconfig              |   36
 drivers/usb/media/Makefile             |    1
 drivers/usb/media/pwc/Makefile         |   56
 drivers/usb/media/pwc/pwc-ctrl.c       | 1644 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 drivers/usb/media/pwc/pwc-dec1.c       |   42
 drivers/usb/media/pwc/pwc-dec1.h       |   36
 drivers/usb/media/pwc/pwc-dec23.c      |  654 ++++++++++
 drivers/usb/media/pwc/pwc-dec23.h      |   58
 drivers/usb/media/pwc/pwc-if.c         | 1965 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 drivers/usb/media/pwc/pwc-ioctl.h      |  307 +++++
 drivers/usb/media/pwc/pwc-kiara.c      |  891 ++++++++++++++
 drivers/usb/media/pwc/pwc-kiara.h      |   45
 drivers/usb/media/pwc/pwc-misc.c       |  142 ++
 drivers/usb/media/pwc/pwc-nala.h       |   66 +
 drivers/usb/media/pwc/pwc-timon.c      | 1446 ++++++++++++++++++++++++
 drivers/usb/media/pwc/pwc-timon.h      |   61 +
 drivers/usb/media/pwc/pwc-uncompress.c |  144 ++
 drivers/usb/media/pwc/pwc-uncompress.h |   41
 drivers/usb/media/pwc/pwc-v4l.c        |  914 +++++++++++++++
 drivers/usb/media/pwc/pwc.h            |  295 ++++
 21 files changed, 9080 insertions(+)

Documentation

• Bugs to see know bugs.
• Consult the ChangeLog to know what’s changed between each releases.
• Read this Howto to install the driver in english.
• Lisez ce manuel pour installer le driver en français.

Kenneth Lavrsen have setup a wiki to answer all questions about the pwc driver. You will find on the wiki a very good [API documentation](http://www.lavrsen.dk/twiki/bin/view/PWC/ApplicationProgrammingInterface) describing ioctls implemented by the driver

Small howto in french to patch the kernel for Debian/GNU Linux.

Files

• Patches can be found here
• Full source code that don’t need patching the kernel
• Old patches can be found here
• Packages using the DKMS system for Linux Mandriva is provided by
• Jean-Christophe Heger
• openwrt package is provided by the OpenWRT team

Links:

Some very usefull links:

• The old maintainer of the driver
• PWC Wiki
• setpwc - control the camera.
• Video for Linux wiki - All information about v4l and v4l2 under linux
• Some projects that use this driver.

Random Quotes:

Note

this version of pwc is an unofficial (modified) release of pwc & pwcx driver and thus may have bugs that are not present in the original version. Please send bug reports and support requests to <luc @ saillard . org>. The decompression routines have been implemented by reverse-engineering the Nemosoft binary pwcx module. Caveat emptor.

Note 2

With this driver, you don’t need the binary module pwcx.ko. The module
pwc.ko contains all code to support you webcam in full resolution. Big tables in the driver is not a binary blob execute on your CPU, but some datas used to do the image transformation.

Note 3

On some webcam likes Quickcam Zoom Silver (usb product ID: 046d:08b4), you need to set module option: power_save=1

Note 4

Some Samsung Webcam need to change the type of the webcam.

Note 5

Last drivers need to have a recent kernel >= 2.6.9

Note 6

Always try the latest snapshots before reporting a bug. Thanks !