Using The Imaging Source Video Devices on Linux
This page explains how to use devices manufactured by The Imaging Source on the Linux operating system.
Please note that unicap is developed and maintained independently of The Imaging Source. Support questions should be directed to the Support Forums. This page is for your information only and the information provided might be incorrect. Please contact the camera vendor for an official statement on the Linux support of their cameras.
Licensing
unicap is licensed under the terms and conditions of the GPL license. As a consequence, you are not allowed to use the library in any kind of closed source software.
unicap and video-4-linux ( and libdc1394 )
unicap is a library for an interface-independend access to video capture devices. video-4-linux and libdc1394 are two interfaces to video capture devices which are used by many existing applications.
Not all devices manufactured by The Imaging Source support either video-4-linux or libdc1394. If you have an application requiring support for one of those interfaces, please check the end of this document for information on the interfaces available for your device.
Information on Specific Devices
The Imaging Source USB CCD Cameras ( AU/BU Series )
Recent firmware for The Imaging Source USB CCD cameras no longer announce the camera as UVC compliant. Thus the uvcvideo driver does not get loaded anymore when connecting such a camera. While it is possible to get the cameras working again by adding an alias for the VendorID and ProductID, there has been no work done in this area as of now. This means that the USB CCD cameras are now unsupported.
The Imaging Source USB CMOS Cameras ( AUC/BUC Series )
Older firmware versions could be used with the uvcvideo driver via the video-4-linux interface. However this solution required some ( bad ) hacking on the uvcvideo driver and did not give access to all camera features. Furthermore the current firmware versions do not advertise the camera as UVC compliant any more so accessing the camera via this method would require even more hacking on the uvcvideo driver.
unicap now supports the cameras via a custom usbdevfs driver. Installation instructions for this driver can be found here: euvccam_cpi Product Info Page
The Imaging Source Video Converters
The DFG/USB2-lt video converter is not supported by any Linux driver and support is not planned.
The DFG/1394-1e video converter is supported by unicap and should require no additional installation step despite a working IEEE1394 ( Firewire ) setup which is present in all recent Linux distributions.
The Imaging Source Firewire Cameras
All The Imaging Source Firewire cameras are supported by unicap and should require no additional installation.
The cameras should also work fine with the libdc1394 library. Please note that since unicap does not use libdc1394, the libdc1394 compatibility of the cameras is not tested and neither The Imaging Source nor unicap-imaging can give software support for this library. Please refer to the libdc1394 project homepage for support options.
Supported Devices List
The list shows which devices are supported by unicap and/or directly via either video-4-linux or libdc1394.
