Acer Travelmate 7720 with Linux

I have installed Linux OpenSuse KDE3.5 as an alternate operating system and it works extremely well (much better than XP) but I have a problem with the Crystal Eye camera it is recognized by Skype 2.0 but I can't get it to work

Any clues which might help?

 

any errors? what do you mean by "cant get it to work?" you just dont know how to use it or when you try it does something else?

some things just wont work, even if it is detected. My fingerprint reader is detected by ubuntu but since there is no driver for it i cant use it.

 

Web cameras are notorious for not having drivers under Linux. Google around for your camera and Linux

 

Sorry for my ignorance. I am very new to Linux ( a friend of mine convinced me to switch over to Linux from XP) and so far I am very enthusiastic, the only drawback is that my webcam does not work on Skype 2.0. Skype recognizes Crystal eye as the webcam but when I do lsusb the webcam is not shown. This is what I get:

charlie@jean-claude:~> lsusb
Bus 006 Device 002: ID 046d:c521 Logitech, Inc. MX620 Laser Cordless Mouse
Bus 006 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 003 Device 003: ID 08ff:1600 AuthenTec, Inc. AES1600
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 007 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 004: ID 5986:0105 Acer, Inc
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
charlie@jean-claude:~>

 

Open a terminal window an issue the following command;

Code:

lsmod

If you don't see a module called uvcvideo loaded, then do the following command and see if it helps;

Code:

sudo modprobe uvcvideo

If that works for you then you just need to modify your system's module boot configuration to load the uvcvideo module whenever you boot your system.

If you see that you do have a module called uvcvideo already loaded, then do the following commands and see if it helps;

Code:

sudo modprobe -r uvcvideo
sudo modprobe uvcvideo quirks=2

If that works, you, (or your friend), can edit your system's module boot configuration, and you can add the quirks=2 line to the loading of the uvcvideo module.

A driver update will likely fix the uvcvideo driver to better support your webcam, from the Linux UVC team, in the future. While technical Linux users can always try and compile the latest uvcvideo driver from the SVN repository source, a process outlined here, for most regular users it's often times easier to just wait for an updated driver to be made available through your Linux distro.

Good Luck..

 

Thanks a lot

I did the command you indicated and there is a uvcvideo

I will wait to see my friend (who is the one knowledgeable about Linux) before trying the other command

I did go to YAST and the list of material includes the Crystal Eye webcam so it is recognized by Linux

That's about that far I can go alone

 

Following my past post I realized that It works under Kopete. I have then compiled the latest uvcvideo from svn but to no avail. It should be noted that other webcams such as Logitech Quickcam Pro work fine.

I contacted other forums and was advised to contact the the uvc-dev discussion group. They replied that if it works with Kopete the problem is not with uvc but with Skype

I tried to contact the Acer people but they did not want to help. They say that the Crystal Eye webcam was installed under the Windows operating system and that they provide assistance for problems under that system only ... a shame really as I know that they are now selling small Acer computers with an integrated webcam under Linux.

I finally contacted the Skype support group. After a few days they indicated that they are aware of the problem and that it should be corrected in the next Skype version. They also asked me to send them a couple of log files to help them.

I must say I am rather pleased by their reaction which is quite professional and different from the one I got from the Acer support group

 

Could you please be more explicit (give an example on any distro) about the file beeing responsible for system module boot ?

Thank you

 

For these distros, you would need to edit the following files, (as root or using sudo);

Gentoo - /etc/conf.d/modules

Ubuntu - /etc/modules

If you look over the documentation for your distro this should be one of the things explained in the installation documentation. You might need to search for it.

Good Luck..