SANE soundvision vidcam backend (AGFA ePhoto CL18) under development

SANE soundvision vidcam backend (Agfa ePhoto CL18) under development

Goal for this page is to collect data about the soundvision usb bridge and to give
information about the SANE soundvision Vidcam backend.
Some parts of the soundvision camlib libgphoto2 are used for this backend.

Main Index, webcam info, #Info, links, documents, #Camera info, #Progress, #Download, #To Do list

Info, links, documents
1. Camera info: AGFA
2. Webcam manufactuers: Soundvision
3. Gphoto2 Agfa CL18 info: http://www.deater.net/weave/vmwprod/agfa/
4. Web archive: Brochure_SV1307.htm
4. Umax Astra Pix 420 pwba pictures
Return/Terug Top

AGFA ePhoto CL18
Interface usb 1.1, vid 0x06bd, pid 0x0403
Optical Resolution: still camera 640 x 480 pixels,
webcam 320 x 160, 160 x 120,
cl18-parts.jpg (392k)
cl18-front.jpg (474k)
cl18-Clarity2.jpg (500k)
Fileformat: video mode .jpg with no header information
It seems the agfa twain drivers uses bulk reads and writes to acess the video mode
instead of the expected isochronous mode.
soundvision-image1.pnm no image yet, instead color noise, resolution 160x120

06-10-2004 .. 08-12-2004 .. xcam frontend screenshot soundvision-screenshot.png

For using this SANE soundvision vidcam backend the following files need to be patched/placed:

sane backends (use SANE version 1.0.18 or higher):
placed in backend directory: soundvision.c, soundvision.h, soundvision.conf.in,
patched in backend directory: Makefile.in, dll.conf
patched configure.in
patched in tools/hotplug libsane.usermap (add line with vid and pid webcam, not needed
when usermap of gphoto2 is present in system)

sane-frontend use 1.0.14 or higher.

At this moment there are two frontends which can be used with the soundvision backend for some tests,
1. xcam: for display (no streaming video (SANE bugreport 300832) only snapshots in
display and save to file is possible).
If a modified version is used, only streaming frames is possible
remove first "stop_camera ();" line in routine "input_available".
2. scanimage: for writing in batch mode to files (files can be one file
each time overwritten or each time a frame is written to a new file).
scanimage -B -d soundvision:libusb:001:002 --batch=out.ppm --batch-count 5 --mode "Color RGB"
for different files use =out%d.ppm
3. saned: not tested yet.
4. scanadf: not tested yet.
5. USB network? see usbip

Using other frontends will be a problem, no idea if for example
writing a gstreamer-sane plugin will be a lot of work and/or difficult.
Another solution could be to use a frontend which can read the file from
scanimage which is refreshed at a rate of .. fps.
Return/Terug Top

Progress
07-12-2004 .. 01-09-2005 .. Working on image conversion, image is now a sort of color noise picture,
02-10-2004 .. 29-03-2005 .. Working on USB BULK READ commands frame data,
                            problem is to find size of frame (Partly done) and reading more then one frame,
01-10-2004 .. 04-10-2004 .. Working on skeleton files soundvision.c soundvision.h soundvision.conf(Ready)
30-07-2004 .. 27-03-2005 .. Check usb traffic, info file, agfa-ephoto-cl18.txt
30-07-2004 Start of webpage, some test done (lsusb -v, sane-find-scanner -v -v,
           xcam, xawtv, camorama, spacagui, gtkam, gphoto2).
	   Status gphoto2 (AGFA ephoto CL18, working, camlib soundvision, see also README),
	   For webcam function no linux driver found yet.
Return/Terug Top

Download
04-10-2004 See Downloads page
Return/Terug Top

TO DO list
1. In webcam mode make some usb trafffic logs (with sniff-usb 1.8),
   Format output (with skipe4.pl) and check usb traffic. 
2. Update agfa-ephoto-cl18.txt file with more USB commands info.
3. Output video format (RGB sequence etc).
4. Check for reset vidcam commands.
Return/Terug Top