Philips SPC900NC no go

[robsmiler]

Philips SPC900NC works with Camorama and Ekiga but does not work with Zoneminder.

Cam status remains red in localhost/zm. Followed suggestion to
sudo chmod 666 /dev/video0
but did not help.

What USB cams are you using (if any).

rob*

[jameswilson]

Philips SPC900NC works with Camorama and Ekiga but does not work with Zoneminder.

Cam status remains red in localhost/zm. Followed suggestion to
sudo chmod 666 /dev/video0
but did not help.

What USB cams are you using (if any).

rob*

if it works in linux i would think it will work with zm. But test with tvtime or xawtv. What res are you using and whats in your logs

[MJN]

What distribution are you using Rob? I'm considering purchasing the SPC900NC given its decent CCD sensor and have not found with certainty how I'll fare with my current Ubuntu 6.06 install.

I'm currently using v10.0.7-unofficial of the PWC driver/module for my Philips PCVC840K (which has sadly now died) however I'm pretty certain I'll need to upgrade to a newer version in order to get support for the 900NC.

See http://www.saillard.org/linux/pwc/ for some further info, and I'd be very grateful to hear how you get on.

Mathew

EDIT: Just checked the above site and found that support for the SPC900NC started in v10.0.12-rc1

[MJN]

Rob,

Did you manage to get anywhere with this?

I'm considering purchasing the SPC900NC and given I use an old(er) version of Ubuntu (and hence the PWC module) I am interested to find out whether I'll have any joy.

Mathew

[KeithB]

I used one of these for several months.
I used the saillard.org pwc-10.0.12-rc1.tar.bz2 and a patch called linux-2.6.15_pwc-10.0.11.patch.bz2.
It also involved getting the kernel source and compiling it.
It may well have good low light for a webcam but that and qualty in general is poor compared to a pro camera and capture card. Any way it did me for 6 months and I notice the price has halved since I got mine.

[MJN]

Ah that doesn't sound too good - not least given I've just ordered one! It was £35 so hopefully I'll still get good enough value. It is replacing an older Philips webcam which gave superb results - given it uses the same CCD sensor (yet improved optics) I'm hoping I won't be disappointed.

Thanks for the response, I have more confidence that I'll be able to get it working.

Cheers,

Mathew

[MJN]

Just to follow-up on this I've now got the camera up-and-running on Dapper (using a compiled PWC module) and am extremely pleased with it.

As you say, low-light performance is superb (thanks largely to a CCD sensor and wide-aperture lens) and I think the image quality is very good too. Perhaps I've not got the comparison of a 'pro camera' but having said that I cannot fault the image at all so I'm not sure that'd help, not least given £35 probably wouldn't go a long way?

Mathew

[KeithB]

Over the 6 months I had one on 24/7 I thought the low light performance declined, maybe because the room got quite bright during the day. The white LED light on the top was 80% dead by then. Maybe the new driver lets you turn the light off instead of having to stick tape over it:)

I imagine the 640x480 ( which I could never try on my old 128Mb box) looks good with no de-interlace artifacts?

Talking a bout pro, I got a Pelco day/night camera yesterday for £36

[robsmiler]

Hi folks,

1st of all:
sorry for looong delay, and thanks for your replies.

For those who wanted to know what distro I am using:

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~$ cat /etc/issue
Ubuntu 7.10 

~$ cat /proc/version
Linux version 2.6.22-14-generic (buildd@terranova) (gcc version 4.1.3 20070929 (prerelease) (Ubuntu 4.1.2-16ubuntu2)) #1 SMP Tue Dec 18 08:02:57 UTC 2007

This SPC900NC I bought because an insider from Skype.com mentioned, that Skype is internally working with this type of cam. With Kubuntu 7.10 camorama this cam worked out of the box. Same with Skype 2.00.7 for Linux. It simply worked.

My personal meaning about this cam:
It is not stylish compared to that devices comming from Logitech (really no beauty) but delivers EXCELLENT !!! results (again compared to that I have seen from Logitech cams, yet).

When I used this cam under dark light conditions I could barely believe what I saw. I having it on my window looking out at our street. During night times only a normal street light is giving some light. With Logitech type cams I only saw pure black pictures and some small spot lights nothing else (even with Logitech SW under WinXP with rightlight etc. enabled. Sensitivity was very poor.). With that Phillips cam one can see shadows produced by objects lightened street lights during night.

Did not test this cam under Windows, yet (which has been told to resolve up to 1.3 Mpix). In Camorama preset resolution is (medium param -H) 320x240. High resolution stil pics with 640x480 (param -M) are phantastic. Movements are not smoothly rendered, though. For zm it should work ok.

xawtv: I could not start this. I read anywhere, that Gutsy (Ubuntu 7.10) using V4L2 as default. Maybe this is the reason why it does not work? Maybe that are the problems I am running into zoneminder, too? I was reading anywhere, that zm is already supporting V4L2. Isn't this true?

[update]
I tweaked around with xawtv. I found while using NVidia card and proprietary drivers under Gutsy, that NVidia does not support DGA anymore. So, when starting it with:

Code: Select all

~$ xawtv -nodga -device /dev/video0

xawtv is working without any problems. Is there a similar thing to append with Zoneminder? Under ZM only the white LED is turning on, but no video does appear.

Any insights? Thanks in advance.

rob*

[MJN]

Can you view images okay in 'camstream'? It contains a handy control for Philips extensions allowing you to tweak different things and set/reset the EEPROM etc.

Mathew

[robsmiler]

Can you view images okay in 'camstream'?

Yes, it does.

It contains a handy control for Philips extensions allowing you to tweak different things and set/reset the EEPROM etc.

Found that there is only marginal difference between 10 fps and 30 fps stream while choosing 640x480 resolution. The moving objects in output window are still 'hopping'. I expect this not as 30 frames per second but could imagine that this is 13 fps instead . Same applies to 320x240. Even with 176x144 objects does not move really smoothly (on my 1600x1200 display it has the size of a bigger stamp).

The low framerate: I am not safe if this is a problem of X-Server or USB transfer. 'top' tells me significant changes in CPU usage. 640x480 peaks with up to 14% (11% nominal) whereas 176x144 is around 4% (1-3% nominal).

That Phillips extension dialog seems to do nothing (valueable). I experimented all that what made sense to me. No visible changes, though. :-/

Back to ZM and again my question (sorry for repeating myself):
What could be the reason why zm does not want to use this cam? Am I'm doing something wrong? Maybe a misunderstanding of any settings?

Any ideas would be highly appreciated.

rob*

[MJN]

Post your current monitor settings for the camera. Do the ZM logs give any hint?

I am curious the extension settings didn't work for you in Camstream - you should have been able to control all manner of things such as exposure, sharpness, contrast, white balance etc - all things which should have a very significant effect on your image. Not that this is pertinent to your problems but a curiosity nontheless.

Mathew

[robsmiler]

Thanks for reply Mathew.

Post your current monitor settings for the camera. Do the ZM logs give any hint?

It recently switched into state yellow once, took a snapshot then turned back to red again.

This is appearing in log file:

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Feb  5 20:31:30 kulix zmwatch[5564]: INF ['zmc -d /dev/video0' starting at 08/02/05 20:31:30, pid = 13047]
Feb  5 20:31:40 kulix zmwatch[5564]: INF [Restarting capture daemon for SPC900NC, shared memory not valid]
Feb  5 20:31:40 kulix zmdc[5536]: INF ['zmc -d /dev/video0' starting at 08/02/05 20:31:40, pid = 13053]
Feb  5 20:31:40 kulix zmdc[13053]: INF ['zmc -d /dev/video0' started at 08/02/05 20:31:40]
Feb  5 20:31:40 kulix zmc_dvideo0[13053]: INF [Debug Level = 0, Debug Log = <none>]
Feb  5 20:31:40 kulix zmwatch[5564]: INF ['zmc -d /dev/video0' starting at 08/02/05 20:31:40, pid = 13053]

I found that I had to start xawtv with -nodga switch because using on this machine NVidia graphics card. Maybe this is something relating with shared memory problem?

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device settings for SPC900NC
SourceType	local
Function	monitor
Max fps		10
Alarm max fps	2
Ref.Img.Blend	7

Device Path	/dev/video0
Device Channel	0
Device Format	auto
Capture Palette	YUV420P
Capt.width	640
Capt.heigth	480

rob*

[MJN]

By 'took a snapshot' do you mean you successfully grabbed an image via ZM?

How do your logs look after a while? Do you get repeats of invalid shared memory errors, or did that only occur whilst restarting ZM after re-configuring?

I take it you've tried a smaller capture size?

Mathew

[robsmiler]

Sorry forgot to mention:
I again tested this Phillips extension dialog. Under low light conditions I could see significant differences. Look here:
http://picasaweb.google.de/lh/photo/5gO ... fF9OOEwEtQ

rob*