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Date:      Fri, 17 May 2002 11:43:02 -0400
From:      Carlos Ugarte <cau@cs.arizona.edu>
To:        Fred Clift <fclift@verio.net>
Cc:        Marco Molteni <molter@tin.it>, <freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG>
Subject:   Re: writing a driver for the IBM ultraport camera (USB)
Message-ID:  <15589.9478.515238.677330@pc-ugarte.research.att.com>
In-Reply-To: <20020517092727.E82061-100000@vespa.dmz.orem.verio.net>
References:  <20020517072741.9472.qmail@cobweb.example.org> <20020517092727.E82061-100000@vespa.dmz.orem.verio.net>

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Fred Clift writes:
 > On Fri, 17 May 2002, Marco Molteni wrote:
 > 
 > > [Bcc to -multimedia]
 > >
 > > On Thu, 16 May 2002 18:21:14 -0400, Carlos Ugarte <cau@cs.arizona.edu> wrote:
 > >
 > > > I'm working on a similar project - a FreeBSD driver for the Philips
 > > > webcams based on the Linux pwc driver.  It's nowhere near working yet,
 > 
 > 
 > Would it be easier to just use the ugen driver and write a 'userland-only'
 > utility that leveraged the ugen driver's ability to already talk to the
 > device?  Seems like that would save you a lot of hassle in developing
 > working code.  There are, however, some bennefits to having a driver -
 > just wanted to mention this possible solution.

That occurred to me, as I have seen the solution work first hand in
another case.  I have a Canon S110 "Digital Elph" still camera that
unfortunately does not conform to the USB mass storage standard.  That
said, it is possible to get it to work with FreeBSD - there is a
program by the name of s10sh that makes use of libusb (and ugen) to
speak the language of the S110.  I agree that doing something at user
level would probably be easier than working on a driver.

That said, I opted to work on a device driver instead for a couple of
reasons.  One is that I think it would be easier to drum up support
from more applications if the device is given its own kernel space
driver (even though a user space library might provide most of the
same functionality).  Another was that I did not feel familiar enough
with USB (the standard) or ugen (the device driver) to know how well
this would work.  And then there is the process of writing a device
driver - though the goal is to support a set of webcams, the "side
effect" of learning more about the kernel and devices in general is
what interested me the most.

Carlos

-- 
Carlos A. Ugarte                                    cau@cs.arizona.edu

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