[linux-uvc-devel] Request support for the camera Imaging Source DMK41

[Laurent Pinchart]

Hi Eric,

Hello,
I can not use my camera dmk41 AU02.AS. With lsusb, it seems recognized, but
no software is able to open it.
According to the website unicap-imaging.org, these usb cameras should
nevertheless be compatible with UVC
(http://unicap-imaging.org/tis_devices_en.htm).
Attachments, you will find dmesg.log and lsusb.log files.
Do I have a chance to see this camera work? What can I do?

In a nutshell, I don't know. Your camera doesn't announce UVC compliance, but
its USB descriptors seem to follow the UVC specification. Whether it actually
complies with the rest of the UVC specification isn't known. Looking at the
linux-uvc-devel mailing list archives it seems like people have had little
success. Results probably vary between models and firmware versions, so no
conclusion can be drawn yet.

You could try applying the following patch to the uvcvideo driver. It should
then pick up the device, but that's not a guarantee that it will then be able
to handle it properly.

[James Fidell]

Post by Laurent Pinchart
Hi Eric,

Hello,
I can not use my camera dmk41 AU02.AS. With lsusb, it seems recognized, but
no software is able to open it.
According to the website unicap-imaging.org, these usb cameras should
nevertheless be compatible with UVC
(http://unicap-imaging.org/tis_devices_en.htm).
Attachments, you will find dmesg.log and lsusb.log files.
Do I have a chance to see this camera work? What can I do?

In a nutshell, I don't know. Your camera doesn't announce UVC compliance, but
its USB descriptors seem to follow the UVC specification. Whether it actually
complies with the rest of the UVC specification isn't known. Looking at the
linux-uvc-devel mailing list archives it seems like people have had little
success. Results probably vary between models and firmware versions, so no
conclusion can be drawn yet.

I've not seen Eric's original email yet, but I have been able to get a
number of the Imaging Source cameras working just by plugging them in
and (as root) doing:

/sbin/modprobe uvcvideo && echo "199e 8101" >
/sys/bus/usb/drivers/uvcvideo/new_id

If that's not the correct USB VID/PID pair for your camera then
obviously it isn't going to work and I don't have the DMK41 to try for
myself, but I believe it should be from the information I've gathered so
far.

If you intend to use the camera for astro-imaging then I am planning to
make a new release of my own imaging application with (I hope) support
for all the TIS D[MBF]K[234]1 cameras in the next week and would be very
pleased to have some feedback on how it performs with the DMK41.

Details for the current release are here:

http://stargazerslounge.com/topic/200733-second-alpha-release-of-linux-capture-application/

You *may* find it will work with the mono TIS cameras such as the
DMK41, but it certainly won't work with the colour models because
there's no support for non-demosaicked video frames in that release.

James

[Eric Magnien]

Hello !

Since my last post , many things have changed in the right direction !
The camera was finally recognized by linux, the kstars software + INDI
too, and I 've done my first long exposure picture ...
48 hours ago, I found a thread on the Imaging Source forum ( "
DFK21AU618 support is Linux" ) who spoke of the difficulty of connecting
a DMK under linux. A first message said this:

"My Linux engineer Told me :
This command tells the driver uvc That It is responsible for the camera

|echo "199e 8101" | sudo tee /sys/bus/usb/drivers/uvcvideo/new_id|

If the number " 8101 " does not work , you can run dmesg to
determine the correct idProduct . "

I tried this command on my laptop and it worked! My camera was
recognized ... Only I had to redo the command on every reboot .
The following message told me the procedure for the effect to be
persistent :

" Indeed . I am not in a position to test with all the different
models , order this solution is looking promising .

I'm not at all Convinced this is the most efficient way to do things
, but on my Mint 15 (based on Ubuntu ) installation I now have a
file / etc/udev/rules.d/70-tis-cameras.rules which reads :

code:

|# Udev rules for TIS CCD cameras|
|||#|
||
|||ACTION!="Add" , GOTO="tis_end"|
|||SUBSYSTEM=="usb" , ENV{DEVTYPE}=="usb_device", GOTO="tis_test"|
|||SUBSYSTEM!="usb_device", GOTO="tis_end"|
||
|||LABEL="tis_test"|
||
|||ATTRS{idVendor}=="199e", ATTRS{idProduct}=="8101",
RUN+="/usr/local/bin/config- tis-camera.sh"|
||
|||LABEL="tis_end"|

and a script /usr/local/bin/config-tis-camera.sh :

code:

|#!/bin/bash|
|||#|
|||# Load and appropriately ||configure ||UVC video driver for the
USB TIS CCD|
|||# cameras|
||

USB_ID="199e 8101"
|/sbin/modprobe uvcvideo && echo $USB_ID > /sys/bus/usb/drivers/uvcvideo/new_id|

This appears to get the camera recognised by the UVC driver when it
is plugged in. I believe that any V4L2-compliant application (that
can handle debayering the raw image data from the camera) should
then work with the colour cameras. I can't test the mono models as I
don't have one, but I think this should work for all of the USB DMK,
DFK, DBK 21, 31 and 41 CCD astronomy cameras and perhaps some of the
others as well. If I can find someone selling a used USB mono camera
that might be useful to me at a reasonable price (probably the
DMK21.618 or DMK41 as I'm unlikely to use the others) then I'll give
it a try, but they don't seem to come up that often.

Having reached this point I also found a couple of German web pages
suggesting the same solution is valid for some microscope cameras,
but I have no first hand information about those.

I'd suggest that it would be very helpful if this information were
made available somewhere on the main TIS website?

James "

Oh wait, James, are you this James ? ;-)

I applied these scripts without really understanding them. Was this the
best solution?

Once recognized the camera, I tested under kstars and INDI . Problem, my
images were black . I asked for help to the leading developer of kstars
& INDI softwares Jasem Mutlaq on INDI forum. The problemcame from the "
V4L2_PIX_FMT_GREY " function. Jasem added explicit support to the
format. Healso added several features like manual control of exposure
time . The result is amazing , I better control my camera now under
linux than under the official Windows software ...

There are still problems to solve : I want my camera is also known as
Raspberry PI . I therefore applied the solutions described above, to no
avail. lsusb and dmesg show that the camera is recognized, but it does
not appear in /dev . (no / dev/video0 ) Maybe that applying the uvc
patch , it would work ?
I plan to connect all my astro equipment on the Raspberry which will
network with my laptop via the INDI server.

I confess I do not know much about programming language , but serve as a
beta tester for software developers is very exciting! James , I will
also look at your software!

My English is not very good, I used Google Translate. I hope you were
able to understand me!

Astronomicalement!

Eric

[James Fidell]

Post by Eric Magnien
Oh wait, James, are you this James ? ;-)

That was me, yes :)

I posted the information there in the hope that it might be easier for
people to find in the future than it was for me to find first of all.

James