QCAM(4)

NAME
qcam - Connectix QuickCam(TM) parallel port camera driver

SYNOPSIS
device qcam0 at isa? at IO_LPT1 conflicts flags 0x0001

DESCRIPTION
The qcam driver provides support for a black and white Connectix QuickCam camera. It allows one to utilize all known modes, and may support as many cameras as there are parallel ports available.

When the parallel ports are probed during boot, the port will be scanned for the presence of a camera.

KERNEL CONFIGURATION
The qcam driver can share the same port with the lpt driver, however you should configure the lpt driver for polled operation using the lptcontrol(8) program if you would like to be able to swap the QuickCam and printer without rebooting. The qcam driver itself does not rely on and will not conflict with the lpt driver. The auto-detection code for the camera is notoriously flakey at times. Until this is resolved, it may be overridden to force the driver to always believe a qcam is attached by adding "flags 0x1" to your kernel configuration line.

IOCTLS
The following ioctl(2) calls apply to QuickCam devices. They are defined in the header file <qcam.h>.

QC_GET
    Read, from the kernel, the current configuration and status information about camera.

QC_SET
    Configure the camera for various operating modes. Image size, resolution, zoom, and luminosity controls are available.

NOTES
If the camera is not found at boot time, the qcam driver will not be available for use.

FILES
/dev/qcamu
    raw mode QuickCam camera unit u, accessed as a read-only character device

DIAGNOSTICS
None.

SEE ALSO
qcamcontrol(1) lptcontrol(8)
The QuickCam reverse engineering project, http://www.crynwr.com/qcpc/

HISTORY
The qcam driver is new to FreeBSD.

BUGS
The driver spin-waits in the kernel, which means on large transfers, the system will be chewing down a lot of time. Doing full motion video at 320x240 is not reccomended until this is fixed.

The driver's auto-detection code for finding a camera on a parallel port is not reliable on all hardware. See the note above for bypass information.

The driver does not support Color QuickCam devices.

AUTHOR
The qcam driver was written by Paul Traina borrowing heavily from code written by Thomas Davis, Scott Laird, Paul Chinn, and additional work done by Russel Nelson.

TRADEMARK
QuickCam is a registered trademark of Connectix Inc.