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---
date: "2006-01-18T01:36:56Z"
title: Computer Show, SN9c102 Webcam App
---


<p><a href='http://twistedpath.org/'>Lyle (term)</a>  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
<acronym title="Keyboard Video Mouse">KVM</acronym>, several touch lamps, the world's cutest (and crappiest) webcam
(see below), and a neat <a href="http://digitalbadge.com/" title="Neat LED-based name badges.">programmable <acronym title="Light-Emitting Diode">LED</acronym> nametag</a>.</p>

<p>The webcam is a <em>OneZero PCC-ST3</em>. A bit of <a href="http://google.com/" title="Google.  Know it, love it, live it.">googling</a> told me it's a
sn9c102-based camera, which is supported by recent (2.6.10+) versions of
the <a href="http://kernel.org/" title="Linux?  What's that?">kernel</a>. I compiled and loaded the modules for <acronym title="Vidoe4Linux">V4L</acronym> and the
sn9c102 driver, then discovered none of the usual webcam apps
(<a href="http://linux.bytesex.org/xawtv/" title="The swiss-army knife of Unix TV applications.">xawtv</a>, <a href="http://linuxbrit.co.uk/camE/" title="Tom's Imlib2-based timestamping webcam daemon.">camE</a>, and <a href="http://linux.bytesex.org/xawtv/" title="xawtv tool for recording movies.">streamer</a>) supported the damn thing.  A bit
more digging turned up <a href="http://bertrik.sikken.nl/webcam/" title="List of various tools for SN9c102-based webcams.">this list of sn9c102 apps</a>.  After a
bit of hacking (and a lot of cleaning) on <a href="http://odie.mcom.fr/~clucas/articles/sn9c102.html" title="SDL-based SN9c102 webcam viewer.">Christophe Lucas's <acronym title="Simple Directmedia Layer">SDL</acronym>
SN9c102 webcam tool</a>, and I came up with my own
<a href="http://www.enlightenment.org/Libraries/Imlib2.html" title="Buggy, poorly-documented, inconsistent, and extremely fast image processing library.">Imlib2</a> webcam tool, which you can download below:</p>

<p><a href="http://pablotron.org/files/sn9c102-webcam-0.1.0.tar.gz" title="Version 0.1.0 of my Imlib2 tool for SN9c102-based webcams.">Download sn9c102-webcam-0.1.0.tar.gz</a> (<a href="http://pablotron.org/files/sn9c102-webcam-0.1.0.tar.gz.asc" title="OpenPGP signature for the aforementioned SN9c102 webcam tool.">Signature</a>)</p>

<p>A final self-referrential twist that would make <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000186/" title="Director known for his maddenly disjointed films.">David Lynch</a> proud:
apparently <a href="http://twistedpath.org/">Lyle</a> 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!</p>