ZoneMinder Forums

Hi,
Im working setting up ZoneMinder at my home and want to use existing webcams as monitors, but will want them to be available for video chat applications.

I have installed mjpg-streamer on Kubuntu 10.04 and can verify its functionality with the test input plugin, but input_uvc.so it does not seem to like my kitchen webcam that uses sn9c20x - it works, but I get garbage rather than an image.

I also verified that mjpg-steamer and kopete can not simultaneously use my video device.

1) Are sn9c20x devices supported by input_uvc.so? If not, is there a work around related to my multiple use needs? If it is supported, Ill open a different thread seeking help once i give up on troubleshooting.

2) What options do I have to allow simultaneous access to a video device?

I have been looking at loop back and virtual devices such as:
* http://allonlinux.free.fr/Projets/AVLD/
* http://sourceforge.net/projects/v4l2vd/

Something along the lines of:
https://docs.google.com/drawings/pub?id ... =731&h=271

/dev/video0-------virtual device ---- kopete
|
|
- transcode -
needed for sn9c20x?
|
virtual device
|
mjpg-streamer

Seems kind of complicated, is there a KISS solution out there?
Thanks a ton!

It finally occurred to me that having a single device is not necessarily the problem.

Rather that trying to have several virtual devices perhaps I should look at udev permissions?

I have a custom rule to set the name of the webcam so it doesnt change with other devices at the machine and I added MODE="0666" to give r/w to everyone. Still, Kopete and VLC could not open the device at the same time.

I also tried opening the device with VLC and then with kopete ran as sudo.


any insights?

bummer 140 views and no response.

are there other users that are employing dual use webcams? how do you do it?

best,