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Powershot as a Webcam

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Powershot as a Webcam
« on: 21 / February / 2009, 17:07:28 »
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Anyone know how this ExtraWebcam program works?  ( http://extrawebcam.com/ )  It apparently has the ability to turn a select amount of Powershots into webcams.  I'm under the impression that it does this via the USB interface.  I know with a A/V cable, and a video capture card it can be done, but that's a little bit less desirable.

I'm only wondering out of pure curiosity.  Being a Linux user, I can't use that program, but I thought it was interesting.

My A1000IS only shows up once in lsusb:
Code: [Select]
Bus 005 Device 043: ID 04a9:318e Canon, Inc.

Seeing as that is the camera in PTP mode, that makes me think that without some kind of firmware hack or something, that it's not possible.

Also, gphoto2 reports the following:
Code: [Select]
bjohnson@ThinkSUSE:~/Desktop> gphoto2 -a
Abilities for camera             : USB PTP Class Camera                       
Serial port support              : no
USB support                      : yes
Capture choices                  :
                                 : Capture not supported by the driver
Configuration support            : yes
Delete selected files on camera  : yes
Delete all files on camera       : no
File preview (thumbnail) support : yes
File upload support              : yes

I'd be interested in knowing what someone that has one of the supported list of cameras for ExtraWebcam gets when running that above gphoto2 command.

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Offline fudgey

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Re: Powershot as a Webcam
« Reply #1 on: 22 / February / 2009, 05:22:42 »
It uses the Canon SDK. Only a handful of cameras are supported in those sdks, out of modern models only ... G and S series I think and (a part of?) sx series.

And no, other cameras do not have the ability to do the same, it's not just a matter of coding stuff on the PC. gphoto2 probably would be able to use remote capture if your camera was.

It's possible to hack PTP downloads to work even during rec mode, which enables some remote functionality in a crude way: http://chdk.setepontos.com/index.php/topic,2696.msg25206.html#msg25206.

 

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