Re: Petition n900 as webcam
 

Hi mate,

I might give that a go... I've only ever done minimal media programming in the past though...

As a starting point, could you confirm if my interpretation of what needs to happen is correct:

1) capture image on n900
2) encode image as a .jpg file
3) send the binary file data to the port SmartCam is listening on

does any EOF or BOF data need to be sent to SmartCam between frames?

Re: [Maemo 5] Camera stream from N900 to PC? (N900 as webcam)
 

Here's an obtuse suggestion!

Install a webserver (lighttpd).
Setup webserver to serve "camera" folder.
Point browser to n900's ip address and webserver port.

Probably a bit insane, but then people do say "No one in their right mind would right it like that" when they see my code!

Re: [Maemo 5] Camera stream from N900 to PC? (N900 as webcam)
 

Haha! I'm glad your not writing an entire OS then! ;-)

As an update for everyone... I installed smartcam on my pc and tried following the instructions earlier which was to send jpegs to the server.

This didn't work, so I looked into it a bit more and it states that the system implemented the moving protocol. Reading into that the following is stated:

1) Connect
2) Server sends a small handshake
3) Client does a small reply
4) Client sends data constructed as follows:

byte
00 to 01: packet type
01 to 05: payload size (file data + 4 byte timestamp)
05 to 09: timestamp
09 to XX: file data

Unfortunately SmartCam doesn't seem to be initiating any handshake with the client so I assume it doesn't following the movino protocol 100%.

Also unfortunately, my N95 is broken so I can't get a packet sniffer going to see where I'm going wrong...

Could anyone else enlighten me on how the SmartCam client and server communicate?

Cheers,

Dan

Re: [Maemo 5] Camera stream from N900 to PC? (N900 as webcam)
 

Hello,

I'm not an expert by all means on all of this. But my aim is to try to get my N900 video camera streaming to my laptop and defined as a dev/video device on my linux box so i can use it with video chat.

Now after some research I tried 2 ways to achieve this but I hit deadends:

- I tried to stream an Rtp stream (using gst-launch) to my laptop and catch it using Mencode (saving it to dev/device0). The use of this method needs a video loopback device to be installed. Something like AVLD.

- Another thing I tried is sending a stream (using gst-launch) to my laptop and catching it with also a gst-launch command but this time i tried to use v4l2sink device=dev/device0.

I don't know if this is a bug or not, but I'm way too tired to fiddle with this some more (it's been 5 hrs :( )

Anyway if any of you peeps would like more info on what i tried to do, do ask :) Hope this helps!

Best Regards,

Karimko

Re: [Maemo 5] Camera stream from N900 to PC? (N900 as webcam)
 

Why is no one interested in a "webcam" over USB? I feel that should be incorporated regardless. Utilise the N900 5Mp as a camera over USB for use with Skype etc.

Re: [Maemo 5] Camera stream from N900 to PC? (N900 as webcam)
 

Hi,
the fact is we do, but we haven't found a proper way to make use of this usefull function.
I also used Mobila Webcam to connect N95 to PC via bluetooth, wifi or USB. I miss this function so much when I move on to N900.

Re: [Maemo 5] Camera stream from N900 to PC? (N900 as webcam)
 

Both the front and back cameras are V4L2 devices, and so VLC should be able stream from /dev/video0 or /dev/video1 (as should gstreamer, which is what the original poster was using). If anyone wants to share scripts, or has copies of the original poster's scripts, I can host them on qole.org for you...

EDIT: I think flumotion is probably a great way to get things working through gstreamer. I look forward to more encoding formats.

Re: [Maemo 5] Camera stream from N900 to PC? (N900 as webcam)
 

Setup LAN over USB and you should be able to use the same techniques already mentioned here for streaming over WiFi

Re: [Maemo 5] Camera stream from N900 to PC? (N900 as webcam)
 

The problem is that the techniques mentioned for streaming over WiFi are good in theory but don't seem to work in practice!

(I would be delighted to be proven wrong however...)

Re: [Maemo 5] Camera stream from N900 to PC? (N900 as webcam)
 

I was able to stream via WiFi to my PC in Linux..
It's relatively easy..