Connexant BT878A, Colour Cameras, Grayscale Images.

Forum for questions and support relating to the 1.24.x releases only.
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Dan.Tech
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Joined: Sat Nov 13, 2010 11:48 am
Location: United Kingdom

Connexant BT878A, Colour Cameras, Grayscale Images.

Post by Dan.Tech »

Before you all have a nab at me, I know that this has shown up in threads a few times previously, and I have read through them, searched the forums and Google but still can't seem to get colour images through the chip with XawTV or ZoneMinder.

I'm running Ubuntu 10.10, ZM 1.24.2, and have a Connexant 8x8 BT878A chip installed - (product page: http://www.camsecure.co.uk/CamsecureBT878aPCICard.html). It's got 8 inputs, and currently I only have 4 cameras installed. I followed a guide from the wiki on how to install ZM onto my machine, along with all the other components such as Apache, MySQL, etc.

First Issue: I tested my cards inputs with XawTV and my only success has been pulling a grayscale image, my cameras are all colour cameras and PAL. After playing around with several capture formats and palette configurations, I realised that I got no image in any format, that was not set to the 'GREY' palette. This would also be listed red in the console to confirm no input, as soon as I changed the palette to grey and hit save, the entry turned green and the monitor showed an image. I tried presets too, but they failed. I must have done something right to be able to pull an image, but with any of the colour palettes selected neither XawTV or ZM could retrieve an image. The best configuration without a distorted picture or anything other problem besides being grayscale, was to have the settings set to V4L v.2, PAL Nc, GREY.*

This led me to believe that I need to just change the driver configuration, when I bought this card it came with instructions which stated to add the options lines to the bttv.conf file under /etc/modprobe.d/, I didn't do this as I was told beforehand that this version of Ubuntu can understand and communicate with these cards without the need for that configuration file. Anyway, with no luck with any other combination, I made a bttv.conf (with sudo nautilus) file as it didn't exist and entered the following as stated in the instructions:
options i2c-algo-bit bit_test=1
options bttv gbuffers=16 card=102,102,102,102,102,102,102,102 radio=0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0 tuner=4,4,4,4,4,4,4,4 chroma_agc=1 combfilter=2 full_luma_range=1 coring=1 autoload=0
I rebooted, found a new problem (which i'll state below*) but after resolving, came to the same result not being able to get any colour images. I deleted the file (using sudo again) because it did not change any notable variables.

*Second Issue: When I rebooted, logged in and started up ZM, and after waiting a few moments, I discovered that all my monitor entries were showing up in red, waiting a little longer maybe for ZM to pick up nothing happened. The settings that pulled the image remained in place, and no settings were lost during reboot but I worked out that to get an image back after reboot (i have tried several times and is extremely annoying) is to change the settings for each monitor, (although sometimes as soon as i changed one monitor, the rest picked up).

The only combination to get an image was to change the Capture method to V4L v.1, along with the Device Format changing it to PAL and the Capture Palette to Grey. This resulted with an output looking like this: Image (screenshot taken from a remote session of ZM).
Then I basically had (and still have) to revert the settings back to what they were, V4L v.2, PAL-Nc, GREY to get a clear (grayscale) image. This is the result after changing: Image (again, screenshot taken from a remote session of ZM).
It makes no sense as to why I have no do it in that specific order to pull an image. I really don't know what else I can do to try and sort this out. This isn't my main priority though, as I don't intend to restart the machine regularly but if someone has a solution, that'd be great. My aim right now is to get colour images.

Ubuntu / Linux is my third OS, and I'm no ubuntu expert, so a little explanation will be required but I am good with computers and programming (windows & mac). I hope I'm not asking for too much and I hope I explained this thoroughly enough and that it makes sense, if you have any queries just ask. Any help is appreciated, thanks in advance,
Dan.[/url]
Dan.Tech
mastertheknife
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Location: Israel

Post by mastertheknife »

How is the airflow inside that computer?
Also, try mounting small heatsinks ontop of the bt878 chips, they can get very hot and overheating might be the problem.

mastertheknife
Dan.Tech
Posts: 19
Joined: Sat Nov 13, 2010 11:48 am
Location: United Kingdom

Post by Dan.Tech »

mastertheknife wrote:How is the airflow inside that computer?
Also, try mounting small heatsinks ontop of the bt878 chips, they can get very hot and overheating might be the problem.

mastertheknife
i bought the device with heatsinks and paste, the board is also at the bottom meaning it's at the coolest part of the base and the unit has three fans, might add an extra one or two but the base does not seem to be overheating. thanks for your help though.
Dan.Tech
mastertheknife
Posts: 678
Joined: Wed Dec 16, 2009 4:32 pm
Location: Israel

Post by mastertheknife »

I have the same card, bought from ebay though.

Works good so far, and i use the settings (in bttv.conf) that you mentioned. these are needed for this card because it doesn't have an EEPROM and thus cannot be auto-detected.

there are few things you can check\try:
1) clean the pins on the card's PCI and inside the PCI slot
2) try different PCI slot
3) check for conflicts (IRQs, etc)
4) try on another computer
5) possibly defective card

Hope you get it working,
mastertheknife.
Dan.Tech
Posts: 19
Joined: Sat Nov 13, 2010 11:48 am
Location: United Kingdom

Post by Dan.Tech »

mastertheknife wrote:I have the same card, bought from ebay though.

Works good so far, and i use the settings (in bttv.conf) that you mentioned. these are needed for this card because it doesn't have an EEPROM and thus cannot be auto-detected.

there are few things you can check\try:
1) clean the pins on the card's PCI and inside the PCI slot
2) try different PCI slot
3) check for conflicts (IRQs, etc)
4) try on another computer
5) possibly defective card

Hope you get it working,
mastertheknife.
i will probably get a replacement card just in case, it's a brand new computer just came the other day and been trying since, no conflicts known yet. What version of Linux are you using and what settings do you have in ZM for each of your monitors as in format and palette?
Dan.Tech
mastertheknife
Posts: 678
Joined: Wed Dec 16, 2009 4:32 pm
Location: Israel

Post by mastertheknife »

I'm using 32bit gentoo on an old pentium 1.4GHz and i capture using V4L1, PAL, RGB24 and 384x288, /dev/videoX and channel 0.
mastertheknife.
Dan.Tech
Posts: 19
Joined: Sat Nov 13, 2010 11:48 am
Location: United Kingdom

Post by Dan.Tech »

mastertheknife wrote:I'm using 32bit gentoo on an old pentium 1.4GHz and i capture using V4L1, PAL, RGB24 and 384x288, /dev/videoX and channel 0.
mastertheknife.
Running a test monitor on channel 5 /dev/video4, I get this result from the camera using those exact settings:
Image

As achieving nothing I reverted my settings to their previous state, I thought that maybe by reducing the resolution to 384x288 will require less processing and might pull a colour image but i just get a flickering image so I've returned back to 640x480, i shall experiment with this as resolution strangely has an effect on image, any ideas?
Dan.Tech
mastertheknife
Posts: 678
Joined: Wed Dec 16, 2009 4:32 pm
Location: Israel

Post by mastertheknife »

Hi,

You need to use channel 0 for all inputs, not channel 5.
Dan.Tech
Posts: 19
Joined: Sat Nov 13, 2010 11:48 am
Location: United Kingdom

Post by Dan.Tech »

mastertheknife wrote:Hi,

You need to use channel 0 for all inputs, not channel 5.
my choice of wording was wrong sorry, i meant monitor 5, all of them are set to channel 0.
Dan.Tech
mastertheknife
Posts: 678
Joined: Wed Dec 16, 2009 4:32 pm
Location: Israel

Post by mastertheknife »

Perhaps you can try the card in another computer (and verify with xawtv, usually works better than zoneminder). If it still doesn't work, its probably defective.

mastertheknife
bb99
Posts: 943
Joined: Wed Apr 02, 2008 12:04 am

Post by bb99 »

Deja vu: Have a look http://www.zoneminder.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=65998

I believe it was an Ubuntu issue, Ross' live cd's are still available over at Linuxtracker, maybe give them a try and see how he gets this card to work and it does work. Just brought up a seed for all of them, your choice (recommend Arch 1.24.2 or PCLinuxOS 1.23.3).
Dan.Tech
Posts: 19
Joined: Sat Nov 13, 2010 11:48 am
Location: United Kingdom

Post by Dan.Tech »

BB99:
bb99 wrote:Deja vu: Have a look http://www.zoneminder.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=65998

I believe it was an Ubuntu issue, Ross' live cd's are still available over at Linuxtracker, maybe give them a try and see how he gets this card to work and it does work. Just brought up a seed for all of them, your choice (recommend Arch 1.24.2 or PCLinuxOS 1.23.3).
I'm not using that machine anymore, the fault was the the card requires a 5-Volt PCI slot, and that system had a 3.3-Volt one. I'm now using a brand new Dell Inspiron 570 which came the other day, and has a 5-Volt slot, so that issue is resolved. Should I still try the live CD's on this new unit?

mastertheknife:
mastertheknife wrote:Perhaps you can try the card in another computer (and verify with xawtv, usually works better than zoneminder). If it still doesn't work, its probably defective.

mastertheknife
I don't have access to a machine I can test it on, I will contact camsecure in the following week and ask if they have a solution or to replace the card just in case it is faulty.
Dan.Tech
bb99
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Joined: Wed Apr 02, 2008 12:04 am

Post by bb99 »

Absolutely! I'd also explore the Fedora option again. Been running flawless for around a year now, actually better than any of the live CD's. One thing to remember is to configure only one monitor when running the CD. Get it running then install to hard drive if you're happy. Also, if you choose one of the Mandriva CD's or PCLinuxOS CD, Fedora is the parent to both with a lot less decisions made for you.
Dan.Tech
Posts: 19
Joined: Sat Nov 13, 2010 11:48 am
Location: United Kingdom

Post by Dan.Tech »

bb99 wrote:Absolutely! I'd also explore the Fedora option again. Been running flawless for around a year now, actually better than any of the live CD's. One thing to remember is to configure only one monitor when running the CD. Get it running then install to hard drive if you're happy. Also, if you choose one of the Mandriva CD's or PCLinuxOS CD, Fedora is the parent to both with a lot less decisions made for you.
I don't know to be sure, I'll probably end up taking that route but I'd prefer to stick with Ubuntu because i'm most comfortable with it. I'll run a live CD or try it in a separate partition just for the purposes testing the output of the card and try to stick with Ubuntu unless I have to.
Dan.Tech
bb99
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Joined: Wed Apr 02, 2008 12:04 am

Post by bb99 »

Try then to post or search the Ubuntu forums for your answer; your card does work and 1.24.2 is suburb, or try a previous version (Prior to 10+) of Ubuntu. Way too many configuration posts (In ZM forums) associated with 10+ to be coincidence.
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