1 This driver will download pictures from the Concord EyeQ Mini. This camera
2 has Vendor:Product number 0x3e8:0x2182 and is one of several cameras occupying
3 the entry level in the digital camera market, as do the SQ905 cameras. I
4 mention the SQ905 cameras because the Concord EyeQ Easy has been reported to
5 me as an SQ905 camera. So that is how I obtained this creature, by accident.
6 I went to WalMart hoping to find an SQ905 camera which would do 640x480. I
7 found a Concord EyeQ Mini, thought it was probably the same thing as a
8 Concord EyeQ Easy, bought it, brought it home, and found out it was something
9 altogether different. Well, then, I just had to make it work...
11 The chip inside the camera is unknown, but the .inf file provided with the
12 camera calls it an "Aox." Apparently, Aox is the same company as Endpoints,
13 Inc. The chip may be an Endpoints SE401 or SE402.
15 According to its manual, the camera can be used as a webcam, or to shoot a
16 short video sequence. AFAIK both of these features require kernel module
17 support in order to be used properly, and those features are not addressed
18 here. This camera library provides a driver for the Concord EyeQ Mini as a
21 For those interested in the webcam features, there do exist Linux kernel drivers
22 for webcams with SE401 (module "se401") and SE402 module "epcam"). Those
23 drivers do indeed support cameras with Vendor number 0x3e8, but Product number
24 0x2182 is not listed in their source files. Furthermore, the mere act of adding
25 the number and re-compiling the kernel module does not seem all by itself to
26 make this camera work as a webcam. The author of these two kernel modules has
27 stated to me in e-mail that Endpoints was willing to share some information
28 with him about how to access the SE401 and SE402 chips in webcam mode. However,
29 my own request for similar information about the still camera functionality has
30 not been answered, as of 11/04/03. This camlib, therefore, has been constructed
31 by means of observation, combined with guesswork.
33 Features and quirks of the camera:
35 The camera has two sizes of pictures. The high-resolution pictures are
36 640x480 pixels. Their data format is a Bayer array, from which it is
37 possible to create a PPM image. The camera holds a maximum of 23 pictures in
38 high-resolution mode. The manufacturer's driver creates JPEG compressed
39 images from the downloaded data, and the user is certainly free to do same.
40 Here, high-resolution pictures will be saved in PPM format.
42 The low-resolution pictures are 320x240. According to the manual, these
43 pictures are compressed in the camera and are downloaded as JPEG images.
44 However, the compression used is unknown. Thus, it is currently not possible
45 to make pictures from the resulting files. You can just download them. Or,
46 better yet, figure out what the format is and let me know. The low-compression
47 data download is not of fixed size, but may vary from one picture to the
48 next. All low-resolution photos will be saved as RAW files, until such time
49 as they are better understood.
51 If you have a random mixture of low-resolution and high-resolution photos on
52 the camera, then the camera will always download the low-resolution pictures
53 first and the high-resolution photos only after that. In other words, in
54 that situation the pictures will not be downloaded in the order in which you
57 The camera also supports "video clip" mode, in which the camera keeps taking
58 frames so long as one holds down the shutter button. Unfortunately, there is
59 not much point in implementing that until the low-resolution non-standard
60 encoded format is better understood, because that is what it uses.
62 Some things which work for me, with various gphoto2 options:
65 will report the number of low-resolution pictures and the number of
66 high-resolution pictures separately, as well as the total number
70 is functional, but see previous remarks about high and low resolution
74 is functional, too, assuming there are at least y pictures in the camera
77 gphoto2 --get-all-raw-data
81 LGPL (see the head of the libgphoto2 source tree; this camera library is a
82 part of the libgphoto2 project).
86 None, neither expressed nor implied. This camera driver has been written
87 for the sake of the challenge, and in order to learn more about both hardware
88 and software support for the hardware from the actual experience of writing
89 a device driver. Those intending to use the Aox camera library should keep
90 these facts in mind, in order to keep an appropriate sense of perspective.
92 Nevertheless, the Aox camera library driver works for me and carries out for
93 me the functions which are described here. I seriously hope and intend that
94 it should work for others, too. Please report any problems or bugs to me or
95 to the gphoto-devel mailing list.
97 Copyright by Theodore Kilgore, November 11, 2003.
100 Additional remarks, June 27, 2004:
103 Thumbnail capability has been added, and the library should be fully functional
104 now with a GUI frontend. I have tested both gtkam and digikam. Gtkam works very
105 nicely for me, but for unknown reasons my digikam somehow fails to display the
106 thumbnails. That is probably the fault of my digikam setup, because it fails for
107 all of my cameras. It may work for you and if you want to use digikam then
108 certainly you should try it.
111 The camera has "video clip" capability, meaning that with a certain camera
112 setting it is possible to hold down the shutter button and keep shooting
113 frames (the only limitation being the amount of free memory in the camera).
114 Unfortunately, the clip mode uses the non-standard compression, and thus
115 there is no point in trying to implement clip mode until the compression
120 New camera D-MAX DM3588 - 0x03e8:0x2130 found by Amauri Magagna
121 <amaurimagagna@gmail.com>. The new camera seems to differ only in minor
122 details from the previously known cameras, but requires a separate model entry.