WebCameras--HOW?

[chrltt]

All the FAQs, Manuals, and HOW-TOs have confused me!

What is a WebCam as opposed to a web-video-cam as opposed to a
digital cam? What I WANT is to be able to see -LIVE- on MY pc
monitor, what my digital camera sees.

Here is what I have:

h/p Vectra VL--intel Pentium II
Fedora Core 1
Linux Kernel 2.4.22-1.2115.nptl
KDE 3.1.4
gphoto2 2.1.2
xawtv 3.88

I have three digital cameras available, each connected via a
USB cable--they are listed in the order that I would prefer to
get up and running on my system:

1. CONCORD eye-Q Duo 1300; vendor ID:0x595
This camera has two modes:
a.Storage mode---product ID:0x1001
b.TWAIN mode---product ID:4343

In storage mode, I can mount it the same way I mount a floppy, and
can see the already captured images. (It requires an entry in the
/etc/fstab file)

In TWAIN mode, I cannot mount it; KDE-->Konqueror-->camera:/ does not see it;
KDE-->ControlCenter-->Peripherals-->camera does not see it for either of the
two available eye-Q entries; and gphoto2 (command line) does not see it.


2. AIPTEK PenCam 1.3 SD; vendor ID:0x04fc; product ID:0x504b
This one works for transfer of already captured images under
gphoto2 and KDE-->Konq-->camera:/ ;
KDE-->CntrlCntr-->peripheral-->camera does see it.


3. KODAK Easy Share CX4300; vendor ID:0x40a; product ID:0x566
This one works for transfer of already captured images under gphoto2 and
KDE-->Konq-->camera:/ ; KDE-->CntrlCntr-->peripheral-->camera sees it.



/dev/video/ had only some items called em83xxxx, so I went through
the proceedure listed in the WebCam-How-To about creating video
devices (section 3.2). This created a symLink for video0.

Then:
Running xawtv -c /dev/video/ yielded:
"can't open /dev/video/: Is a directory"

Running xawtv -c /dev/video0/ yielded:
"can't open /dev/video0/: Not a directory"

What the hej?


Is it possible (and if so, HOW) to use one of these cameras as a LIVE
video device with the pc monitor acting as the display/view finder?

I'm not interested in using a TV card for this, although both the Concord
and the Kodak cameras will display live to a TV set.

THANKs for any help/ideas

[TheSpeedoBeast]

My guess is that a webcam does still images that are updated periodically, while a video cam does video. Not positive though.

[deltaclipper]

I checked it out sometime ago when I was about to buy a webcam, but didn't in the end. Here are two sites of interest:

http://zc0302.sourceforge.net/zc0302.php
http://www.qbik.ch/usb/devices/

I'd be happy to hear from anyone who gets it working and you're experiences... :)