Using a DFK 72AUC02 under Linux

[stefank]

Hi together,

it's probably a bothersome question for most of the experts. However, I would like to know if the USM-CMOS camera DFK 72AUC02 can be operated under Linux (Ubuntu 10.04 LTS - Lucid Lynx) without serious limitations. If yes, is there any procedure available how to install all components? I would deeply appreciate any help and suggestions.

Thanks a lot in advance
Stefan

[Michael Rickmann]

We have a DFK 72AUC02, serial 31010023, it is a nice camera. I had some time to work with it under Lucid using the unicap libs and ucview, both compiled from bzr. I got an image immediately. The problem which I had was that some of the controls for the cam were not functional. When looking at the USB traffic by which the Windows software controls the cam I had no difficulty in interpreting the URBs on the basis of libunicap's source code. The Win software, however, appeared to emulate some of the controls, for which libunicap sends a direct command to the cam (white balance, auto exposure and gain, frame rate). In brief, I started programming a bit and got the cam working almost perfectly for my purposes and ultimately stable under 32 and 64-bit Lucid. Currently I am cleaning up and reordering my patches. When done I will post them in the UCView forum.
Regards
Michael

[stefank]

Hallo Michael,

thanks for you response and these good news. I am engaged in microscopy and want to adapt this type of camera to my own trinocular as well as to the microscopes of the university department. Ubuntu is the one and only operating system on my computer and I am not willing to change this. So I am somewhat limited in using additional hardware especially due to my inability of writing or even modifying programs. Could you please give me a short memo when you deposit your patches to the forum?! Probably some additional questions might occur related to the installation procedure.

Thanks again
Stefan

[Michael Rickmann]

Hallo Stefan,
I will have to split my answer into three parts as the forum sofware only allows one url per post.
Currently, I am quite satisfied with ucview, the unicap libs and our DFK 72AUC02 camera. Since the changes which I posted a week ago in viewtopic.php?f=8&t=262 apparently have been tested just by me, I do not provide binary packages which would ease installation of course but only the source code.
Michael

[Michael Rickmann]

Hallo Stefan,
As current bzr is a bit inconsistent with respect to packaging I have prepared some source packages from unicap libs bzr 68 and ucview bzr 12. You find them at http://wwwuser.gwdg.de/~mrickma/unicap/ ... 024.tar.gz but you will have to compile them before installation. Note that everthing is under the GNU General Public License.
First install a few essential packages for building:
sudo apt-get install checkinstall build-essential dh-make devscripts fakeroot patch diff patchutils
Make a new directory, download my archive to it and extract it. In the source directory you will find three types of files xxx.orig.tar.gz ones containing the original source code, xxx.debian.tar.gz ones containing the debian subdirectory needed to build, and xxx.dsc ones which just contain the description of the package. I have versioned packages which will compile the original bzr code -bzr1.0 , packages which will aply my changes are versioned -mri1.0 (libunicap, ucview).
You will have to compile and install libunicap, libucil, libunicapgtk, ucview and ucview-plugins in that order. Let us start with the first one.
Setup the source:
dpkg-source -x source/libunicap_0.9.12-mri1.0.dsc
Change to the newly generated directory and compile the source:
cd libunicap-0.9.12
debuild -us -uc # debuild will complain about missing packages, sudo apt-get install them
cd ..
As your superuser install the packages:
sudo dpkg -i libunicap2_0.9.12-mri1.0_i386.deb libunicap2-dev_0.9.12-mri1.0_i386.deb
For each package you will need to install a binary and a -dev package, for the plugins only a binary package. If present, for the binaries prefer the xx2 to the xx-2 ones. Repeat the cycle for libucil, libunicapgtk, ucview and ucview-plugins.
Good luck
Michael

[Michael Rickmann]

Hallo Stefan,
-last part- if you need more help, look up my details at http://www.neuroanatomie.uni-goettingen ... Gruppe.htm and contact me directly.
Regards
Michael