Computer Show, SN9c102 Webcam App

January 18, 2006

Lyle (term) pointed me at a local computer show this weekend, so I headed over there and picked up some new toys. I got a cheap 4-port KVM, several touch lamps, the world's cutest (and crappiest) webcam (see below), and a neat programmable LED nametag.

The webcam is a OneZero PCC-ST3. A bit of googling told me it's a sn9c102-based camera, which is supported by recent (2.6.10+) versions of the kernel. I compiled and loaded the modules for V4L and the sn9c102 driver, then discovered none of the usual webcam apps (xawtv, camE, and streamer) supported the damn thing. A bit more digging turned up this list of sn9c102 apps. After a bit of hacking (and a lot of cleaning) on Christophe Lucas's SDL SN9c102 webcam tool, and I came up with my own Imlib2 webcam tool, which you can download below:

Download sn9c102-webcam-0.1.0.tar.gz (Signature)

A final self-referrential twist that would make David Lynch proud: apparently Lyle recently purchased the same webcam, and hadn't bothered to slog through the Linux muckery to get it working. Everyone's a winner when I get new toys!