Hi,
On 06/03/2009 06:13 AM, Erik de Castro Lopo wrote:
Hi all,
I'm a senior software engineer [0] with a small startup. Our product
is Linux based and makes use of a 3M pixel camera. Unfortunately, the
camera we have been using for the last 3 years is no longer being
produced.
We have found two candidate replacement cameras, one with a binary
only driver and user space library and one with a windows driver
but no Linux driver.
My questions:
- How difficult is it to create a GPL V4L driver for a USB camera
by snooping the USB traffic of the device when connected to
a windows machine? The intention is to merge this work into
the V4L mainline and ultimately the kernel.
That depends mainly on the format of the image data by the cam,
if the cam sends raw bayer data, or raw yuv / rgb then this is doable,
if it uses plain JPEG it is also doable. If it uses some custom
compression then you need a wizzkid to crack the code. I've tried
this myself, and I failed, you really need someone with the right
mindset to reverse engineer a compression algorithm. Merely being
a good programmer is not enough.
- How much work is involved in the above for someone experienced
in writing V4L drivers?
This can vary wildly, assuming the video data format is a known one,
a wild estimate would be that this takes 2 fulltime weeks (with hands
on hardware access). But it could be that it takes much longer if
somehow the cam is strange (or worse, like buggy).
- Are there people involved with the V4L project that would be
willing to undertake this project under contract?
Your welcome to send me a couple of cams, that is usually all the
payment I expect, I also don't make any promises (I do this on top
of my dayjob). But first things first, what are the usb-id's of
the cams, can you send me (offlist) the windows drivers ? Chances are
the chipset used is already supported.
Regards,
Hans
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