Subject: Re: Digital cameras (USB esp.) on NetBSD.
To: None <netbsd-help@netbsd.org>
From: Wolfgang Rupprecht <wolfgang@wsrcc.com>
List: netbsd-help
Date: 10/21/2000 12:08:51
rauch@eecs.ukans.edu (Richard Rauch) writes:
> The Olympus 360L looks like a pretty good camera to represent my upper
> range here:

The Olympus series is one of a zillion cameras based on the Sierra
Imaging firmware.  I am trying to get one of the other cameras based
on this firmware (Nikon Coolpix 990) working with NetBSD over USB.

Currently I'm using one of the spare ISA->pcmcia adaptors from my
webgear raylink/aviator installation to talk to the compact flash (via
a CF->pcmcia socket adaptor).  The compact flash shows up as wdc1, wd1
to NetBSD.  One can simply mount the flash as an MSDOS formatted disk.
I mount it read-only, just to make sure that netbsd won't try to write
to the flash and use up some of its limited cycle-life.

The pcmcia connection in theory is a bit faster than USB.  A dd of the
whole 64MByte card completes in 63 seconds (for just a touch over
1MByte/sec).  I'm not exactly sure why I'm only seeing 1MB/sec, but it
is already so much better than the old Olympus 320 over a 115kbit/sec
serial link that I haven't spent too much time trying to get a better
speed out of it.

In theory gphoto2 talks to the camera's USB, or at least does when
running that penguin OS.  I've tried gdb-ing my quick-n-dirty hack of
gphoto2 to see why it doesn't work under NetBSD but gdb simply refuses
to breakpoint dynamic libraries that are linked in at runtime via
dlopen().  After a few hours of inserting printf's and recompiling I
decided it just wasn't worth the effort.

-wolfgang
-- 
       Wolfgang Rupprecht <wolfgang+gnus@dailyplanet.wsrcc.com>
		    http://www.wsrcc.com/wolfgang/
Coming soon: GPS mapping tools for Open Systems. http://www.gnomad-mapping.com/