Tip: Getting Your Webcam To Work In Ubuntu -- Ubuntu Geek

Tip: Getting Your Webcam To Work In Ubuntu

Posted by Shantanu Goel on May 12th, 2008 Email This Post

I have an old noname cheapo webcam, that I dusted out of my junk (why? More on that in a post coming soon). I hoped that it would work in my Ubuntu setup out of the box like most of my other hardware. I connected it to my laptop’s usb port. dmesg gave the following output:

[21328.211333] usb 1-1: new full speed USB device using ohci_hcd and address 2
[21328.319698] usb 1-1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
[21328.439705] Linux video capture interface: v2.00
[21328.458509] zc0301: V4L2 driver for ZC0301[P] Image Processor and Control Chip v1:1.05
[21328.459113] usb 1-1: ZC0301[P] Image Processor and Control Chip detected (vid/pid 0×0AC8/0×301B)
[21328.520576] usb 1-1: PB-0330 image sensor detected
[21328.870287] usb 1-1: Initialization succeeded
[21328.870919] usb 1-1: V4L2 device registered as /dev/video0
[21328.871001] usbcore: registered new interface driver zc0301
[21328.913737] usbcore: registered new interface driver gspca
[21328.913811] ubuntu/media/gspcav1/gspca_core.c: gspca driver 01.00.12 registered

Great! Everything set up, I thought. But running various programs, camorama, camE, kopete, everything gave weird errors like “Connection could not be made”, “device not ready” or just showed a blank screen. But soon, after few trial and errors, I found the solution. Basically the “zc0301″ module is the culprit and all you have to do to get your camera working is prevent it from loading. So, this is what I did:

sudo modprobe -r gspca
sudo modprobe -r zc0301
sudo modprobe gspca

And voila! the webcam started working like magic. Of course, this tip is only for webcams that use this particular chip. And if you want to make this change permanent so that you don’t have to run these commands everytime you want to use your webcam, all you have to do is add the following line to your /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist file

blacklist zc0301

This would prevent the module from loading whenever you connect your webcam to your computer. Let me know if this worked for you or if you have some of your own tips/tricks/hacks to get this or other webcams working on linux.

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This entry was posted on Monday, May 12th, 2008 at 12:04 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

10 Responses to “Tip: Getting Your Webcam To Work In Ubuntu”

Jithin James Says:
May 12th, 2008 at 8:22 am
hi,
i got a creative webblaster webcam,can you tell me what are the adjustments to be made?
i think my driver is ov511 and i have installed it but can you tell me what are the modifications i need to make in your method to get the webcam working?
Krauze Says:
May 12th, 2008 at 11:57 pm
hey,

Have a question, is there something (drver or software) which enable my notebook cam? I have Asus F3F Series, can’t remember what model. And do not want to check it:P (it has CPU Duo T2450).

Am running on Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsby Gibon
eluminx Says:
May 13th, 2008 at 3:41 am
I am experiencing the same situation you were, but mine did not get fixed by your tip. One thing i have noticed tho is that i cannot open my gstreamer-properties to try and change the input type. Everytime i try to change it, it always freezes and i could never close it, not even if i try to kill thought CLI or with the sysmon. I have tried other options and my webcam still doesnt work in cheese or in kopete. Have you got any other tricks up your sleeve, if you do that would be great, thanks for the this tip tho is always great to try new things.
Pavel Barina Says:
May 13th, 2008 at 4:04 pm
Thanks, on my laptop Acer Aspire 5520G work webcam now. Before I add zc0301 to blacklist, webcam don’t work.
Shantanu Goel Says:
May 13th, 2008 at 4:24 pm
@Jithin: Try this http://gingedas.net/?q=node/170

@Krauze, Eluminx: Can you tell me your webcam models?
Shantanu Goel Says:
May 13th, 2008 at 4:26 pm
@Pavel: Glad it worked for you
Shantanu Goel Says:
May 13th, 2008 at 4:28 pm
Guys, also check out my kinda unique copy-paste program at http://www.ubuntugeek.com/ease-out-your-copy-paste-woes-use-shantz-copy-basket.html
or
http://tech.shantanugoel.com/projects/misc-stuff/shantz-cp-basket
and give me your feedback about it.
eluminx Says:
May 13th, 2008 at 11:50 pm
@Shantanu Goel: this what lsusb returns “Bus 002 Device 002: ID 0ac8:303b Z-Star Microelectronics Corp. ZC0303 WebCam” Hopefully that helps. THanks for taking the time…
Shantanu Goel Says:
May 14th, 2008 at 7:14 pm
@Eluminx: And what does “lsmod | grep gspca” give?
eluminx Says:
May 16th, 2008 at 12:42 am
@Shantanu Goel:

gspca 657872 0
compat_ioctl32 11136 2 zc0301,gspca
videodev 30720 2 zc0301,gspca
usbcore 169904 8 zc0301,gspca,usblp,usb_storage,libusual,ohci_hcd,ehci_hcd