Baslinux mailing list

["David Moberg" <davidjmoberg AT gmail.com>]

David Moberg wrote:
> 3aoo-cvfd AT dea.spamcon.org wrote:
> > David Moberg wrote:
> > >
> > > > > I know that libusb (for user-space USB drivers) works on BL3.4,
> > > > > because I used a statically compiled version of a libusb program
> > > > > to successfully access a digital camera in BL3.4.

I remembered incorrectly. In fact, it was a dynamically compiled
version of gphoto2.

> > > > Is that available from your BL3 page?

> > > (The program in question is gphoto2. You do mean that, and not
> > > libusb, right?)
> >
> > I was thinking libusb (the static one that works with BL3).
>
> libusb is just a library for building user-space USB drivers. Several
> programs, including sane and gphoto2, are built on top of it. libusb
> would likely not be useful for BL3 - it's probably too new to work
> with libc5.

Surprisingly, the latest version of 6-month-old gphoto2 and all of its
dependencies, including libusb, compile for libc5. I made gphoto2 and
supporting libraries into a package with makepkg, then I installed
this package and Slackware 4.0 ldso.tgz on a brand-new BL3.40 fs.img.
This package is tested working perfectly with a Kodak USB camera.
Steven, do you want to test it with your serial camera to verify that
the serial port support works? Ron, can you test your camera and
report if it works?

To set it up for usage, download and install the 900K package:

wget http://us.share.geocities.com/davidjmoberg/gphoto2.tgz

(I want to verify that everyone can easily follow the directions and
get it to work before I put it on my BL3 downloads page.)

Also download and install ldso.tgz from SW40. I don't know exactly why
this ldso package is needed, but I do know that without it, gphoto2
doesn't work correctly.

In addition to the terse provided documentation, there is an official
gphoto2 manual: http://gphoto.sourceforge.net/doc/manual/

As I understand the documentation, to use a serial camera you must,
after installing: (Steven, please test these directions - I don't have
a serial camera to test with)

1) Verify that the serial port works correctly (if it works for a
modem it should work for a camera).
2) Page through the output of 'gphoto2  --list-cameras | less' and
find your camera.
3) Plug in and turn on your camera.
4) Execute 'gphoto2 --port=serial:/dev/ttyS0 --camera="Camera name"
-P', where ttyS0 is the name of your serial port, and "Camera name" is
the name of the camera discovered in step 2. This command transfers
all pictures to the current directory.

For a USB camera (tested working with a Kodak):

1) Insert USB modules. For BL3.40, get the modules from the BL3.40
site. You need to insert usbcore.o, and also the one specific to your
host controller (e.g. usb-uhci.o or usb-ohci.o).
2) After inserting usbcore.o, but before running gphoto2, mount usbdevfs:

mount -t usbdevfs /proc/bus/usb /proc/bus/usb

3) Plug in and turn on camera.
4) Execute 'gphoto -P'. Again, this transfers everything to the
current directory.

See 'gphoto2 --help' and the provided documentation for lists of what
else you can do with gphoto2.

David