[Qce-ga-discussion] QuickCam Web not quite working

[phil <ph...@no...>]

Hello,

I've spent some time trying to get my QuickCam Web (usb) running with
the qc-usb drivers and I'm pretty close to getting it working (I think). 
I've got the drivers compiling, installing, and loading just fine. lsmod 
shows the driver loaded, I've got an entry in /dev (video0) and the test 
program that ships in the qc-usb-0.6.6 source tree shows the correct 
attributes for my camera:
<snip>
     		*** Camera Info ***
	Name:           Logitech QuickCam USB
	Type:           513
	Minimum Width:  32
	Maximum Width:  356
	Minimum Height: 32
	Maximum Height: 292
	X:              0
	Y:              0
	Width:          356
	Height:         292
	Depth:          24
	Color           true
</snip>

When I run the test program the the -l flag, the "Read frames:" messages
dump but where they usually read frames at around 7.5 fps (I've had this
camera working fine in the past) they're very slow and I'm getting 
messages in syslog like so:

<snip>
	Nov 24 13:47:33 lili kernel: quickcam: frame lost
	Nov 24 13:47:34 lili last message repeated 9 times
	Nov 24 14:05:16 lili kernel: quickcam: Control URB error -2
</snip>

The funny thing is this: if I put my hand over the camera lens the test
program starts getting frames again and my syslog stops getting frame
drop messages ... creepy.

As an additional test I loaded up camorama (a program I've used before
with this camera) to see how it would react. I get an error message 
popping up saying "Unable to capture image". However, if I put my hand 
over the lens (like above) I get a video of the inside of my hand :-), 
program doesn't hang/error out. As soon as I remove my hand though, the 
application hangs up (presumably waiting for frames that are being 
dropped) and eventually I get the error message pop-up telling me it's 
"Unable to capture image".

This seems to be pretty erratic behavior and I have no idea where the 
problem may lie. I've tried version 6.5 and 6.6 of the driver as well as 
the qc-usb-source that comes packaged for debian. My gcc version matches 
the one used to compile my kernel and everything.

Any help would be great.

TIA,
- Philip