Meteohub Webcam suggestions

[arwi]

Hi,

I have problems with my USB webcam attached to the meteohub. It is a fairly old Intel model which has problems with adjusting to different outdoor light conditions and white adjustment (outdoor white is displayed as pink).

Now I am looking for a replacement. I have noticed the compatibility list in the manual and also consulted the web page the manual refers to but this doesn`t help a lot as the list doesn`t say which cams work well with outdoor light situations. Also the cam shouldn´t have an Autofocus which might focus on the window glass and not infinity. Moreover, more recent cams seem to be missing in the list.

Question: If anyone of you is using a webcam attached to the meteohub and is satisfied with the picture (white = white, picture is reasonably sharp) it would be nice if you posted your webcam info here.

Thanks for your help!

Arnd.

[arwi]

No one using a Webcam with the meteohub?
Any help appreciated!

[cd0085]

I have tried but found results to be very poor due to lack of processing power. i think this feature will be very hard to effectively implement.

[peteroi]

I tried a QuickCam® for Notebooks Deluxe with very good picture results-
only after some time (during one day or so) there was more and more distortion, picture was tilted more and more.
Seems to be a problem with slug computing power, and clearly was getting worser the more diagramms I wanted to have uploaded...

[paolo_ver]

I have a compatible webcam and an alix 1... I put the usb cable but nothing happened! I need other drivers not included in meteohub ? I don't see anything on meteohub's webcam page....what I'm doing wrong ?

Thanks!

[wfpost]

wasn´t the webcam feature discontinued a year ago?

[paolo_ver]

Hallo! I think (thought) that the webcam feature was discontinued for the nslu due to the lack of the computational power of that system...but in an other hardware situation it's possibile to give it a try...:unsure:

Thahk you!

Paolo.

[skyewright]

wasn´t the webcam feature discontinued a year ago?

My impression too.
The Meteohub documentation says (my emphasis):

Appendix H: Supported USB Web Cams (no longer supported)

[admin]

x86 has web cam support enabled again. There was no way to make it work with the NSLU2, so Meteohub on NSLU2 no longer provides this feature, but on x86 the menu is there. I have had two usb web cams connected to an ebox4300 and that worked ok.

downside is, that I didn't find a usb web cam that can handle outdoor light situations. I experimented with old sun glasses, but results stayed poor.

I have a Creative and a Samsung Pleomax, the Pleomax works much better, but not usable for outdoor light conditions.

[skyewright]

downside is, that I didn't find a usb web cam that can handle outdoor light situations. I experimented with old sun glasses, but results stayed poor.

A lot of people on Weather-Watch seem to like the Logitech Quickcam Pro 5000 and 9000 models.

If the problem is having the sun in the frame, take a look at an example shot from a 9000 here.

I went the IP webcam route and am happy with my Panasonic BL-C140. It doesn't handle direct sun as well as the Logitech 9000 (i.e. the ball of the sun is quite large), but it handles low light well.

[skyewright]

IP webcam...Panasonic BL-C140. It doesn't handle direct sun as well as the Logitech 9000 (i.e. the ball of the sun is quite large)

I dug out an example to illustrate...
The camera looks at an angle through a double glazed window. It might do better if I trusted it to be outside (it has an IPX4 protection rating).

[skyewright]

A lot of people on Weather-Watch seem to like the Logitech Quickcam Pro 5000 and 9000 models.

I was able to try plugging a Logitech Quickcam Pro 5000 into my ALIX 1D. It wasn't noticed at all, so presumably not supported? Not too unexpected, as it wasn't in the list...

[paolo_ver]

I plugged a compatible webcam but in the webcam-menu I didn't see any picture...it's an ALIX1D problem or something else ? I tryed a Creative video im.
Some suggestions ?
Hi!
Paolo.

[admin]

I checked on my ALIX.1D and it also fails.

That made me a bit wondering. I repeated tests with ALIX.3D2, Fit-PC and ebox and it works on all that, except ALIX.1D.

dmesg shows an error in USB low level communication with gspcav1 module:
/usr/src/gspcav1-20071224/gspca_core.c: [gspca_set_isoc_ep:945] ISO EndPoint found 0x81 AlternateSet 7
/usr/src/gspcav1-20071224/gspca_core.c: init isoc: usb_submit_urb(0) ret -28
/usr/src/gspcav1-20071224/gspca_core.c: [gspca_set_isoc_ep:945] ISO EndPoint found 0x81 AlternateSet 6
ohci_hcd 0000:00:0f.4: leak ed cdcef9c0 (#81) state 2

I will try to find a solution. Hard to believe that even ALIX.1D and ALIX.3D2 are different on this!

[admin]

when I disconnect the wmr-100 from ALIX.1D the web cam works ok.

Looks like a bandwidth problem (ret -28 indicates this), but I don't have any idea why.

My guess is, that usb WMR devices might have this problem. USB serial driven stations (ones with usb/serial adapter or vantage usb or rfxcom) seem to work ok with web cams on ALIX.

Not a real good explanation, but at least what I could find out by testing here.