Camera on the N800
 

I currently have a 770, it is perfect for my needs. I have a bluetooth GPS that works with Maemo Mapper, and I can edit spreadsheets.

I want to upgrade to a N800 for the camera (still camera, not video) feature. I did a little searching on line and discovered that the resolution for the camera is 640 x 480 which equates to approximately a 4 x 6 photo. This is perfect for when I travel and just want a quick snapshot.

I have been searching the forums and it looks like the camera (still or video) is not that well supported in the N800 (or N810 for that matter).

Does anyone use the camera in their N800 for still photos? If so how does it work and what software did you have to install?

Re: Camera on the N800
 

the camera on the n800 is pretty bad. Its pretty grainy and unless you're outside on a nice day, I don't think you're gonna get any decent shots.

Re: Camera on the N800
 

I don't use the camera. Can't really. It's got very low resolution, so it's nit useful for taking photos, and even for the video chat (if I could get it to work consistently) it's rather lame, so to speak.

Re: Camera on the N800
 

Have to agree with everyone else here, the camera on the n800 is so close to useless it is pathetic.

Re: Camera on the N800
 

Yeah the Camera is pretty bad. There is nothing we can do about the resolution but it seems that we could minimize the graininess by somehow adjusting the gain or the ISO setting on the camera. it seems turned way up. I dont know how to even go about doing this but maybe could be done with Python or something.

Re: Camera on the N800
 

The camera seems to be the same as the secondary camera added for video telephony only on many Nokia 3G phones - and even the primary cameras on phones can't replace a good digicam.

Re: Camera on the N800
 

Thanks for the quick replies!. It looks like I will keep my 770 and save my money for an ASUS Eee.

Re: Camera on the N800
 

The contrast and graininess is so bad, you might think twice about doing snaps or videocalls with/for your wife/girlfriend!:rolleyes:

Re: Camera on the N800
 

The camera is not good. But it's not the worst thing ever. As you mentioned it's 'vga' or 640 x 480 (about .3 megapixel). With good lighting like office or retail florecent or daylight, it can take fair still pictures. I've used it to take snapshots of people who's name/face I forget or items on store shelves. There is a 'camera' app that captures the images.

It wouldn't replace a real camera. It would be nice if you could 'pop' it out and put in a ?Megapixel camera eye.

Re: Camera on the N800
 

i think the camera is not usable, support videochat only with users with tablets, and i try to test it in macromedia flash, but...... the flash don't find it . i think the drivers are very bad or some else , about photos veryyyyyyy bad for video capture .... same

Re: Camera on the N800
 

I don't think the camera is all that terrible. You definitely are not going to want to take your holiday photos with it and it does suck in low light (like most cameras ... that's why they have flashes) but for some purposes (photo-blogging, a site survey, simple portrait, etc.), it is quite adequate.

OS2008 with the latest Camera app finally is quite stable and takes decent shots. I think where the web cam will really shine is when (if?) they get video capture worked out as that is generally done at the lower resolutions that the cam is capable of.

Maybe with the boost in CPU speed and the faster file system, video streaming to flash memory will work better than previous attempts.

Re: Camera on the N800
 

Well..

a) It can do video calls with PC via Gizmo or over SIP in OS2008 currently. Personally I think video over SIP looks pretty good.
b) Flash not supporting webcams in Linux isn't unique to the N8xx's, they haven't added support yet for Linux.
c) If someone would make a Jabber client for the PC that supports jingle-video then there would be another usable option.

Re: Camera on the N800
 

It is supported for Linux in Flash 9 if the camera driver supports some common APIs. But it is not working on Maemo.

Re: Camera on the N800
 

Noob question here... does the camera work in any of the IM programs for video chat, like I can do in Yahoo with my pc and webcam? Am I dreaming?

Re: Camera on the N800
 

That's news to me. :) I can't imagine anything more common then video4linux though, which I thought Maemo uses with the camera. (at least that Motion app posted a while used it in OS2007). Which would mean they litterally stripped it from the Flash implementation?

Re: Camera on the N800
 

Bug/enhancement filed here:
https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1889

Re: Camera on the N800
 

Moonshine, you got me digging again and I just found this:
Maemo 4.x > How to Use Camera API
which says "The built-in camera present in some Nokia Internet Tablet devices is compatible with Video-4-Linux version 2 API".

But Flash 9 is looking for Video-4-Linux version 1 API. So that may be the issue.

Re: Camera on the N800
 

Uggg, that's amazing. It's much like how the tablets support jingle-video over Jabber, yet no PC client has support for it yet. How the tablets can be "ahead" of PC software is beyond me. I can only hope that flash and PC jabber clients will catch up.

Re: Camera on the N800
 

Which software does Video over SIP in Linux on a PC with the N800? Ekiga? Linphone? ... ? :)

Re: Camera on the N800
 

Ekiga might be a good one to try with Asterisk per:

http://www.voip-info.org/wiki-Asterisk+video

I've been using Eyebeam on Windows so far. I have come across one thing that I think is a bug in OS2008 beta:

https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2446

So it's not perfect, but it's promising. I think the video looks pretty decent.

Re: Camera on the N800
 

I'd be curious to have someone confirm they were able to have a linux PC to nokia n8x0 video call... :-)

Thanks!

EDIT: uhm, just tried videosupport=yes with allow=h263 in the 2 clients (ekiga / n800) and it didn't work.

Though i don't have a webcam for ekiga to work with so maybe it doesn't work asymetrically?

EDIT2: uhm, there seems to be eyebeam for Linux too...