Ubuntu, Creative Live! Cam Video IM, ov51x & Skype

Hi Guys, sorry haven’t been posting, exams and all that.

A while ago, I got my Creative Live! Cam Video IM webcam working with Ubuntu. Not to say it wasn’t easy, not having much documentation (or that documentation locked up somewhere in the intenet, in Google 12th Search Page

So I decided to post here what to do (some of this is from https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Ov51x).

Get linux headers

Get the linux headers for your system, so that you can compile the drivers once you downloaded them. To do this, open a terminal window and type

sudo apt-get install build-essential linux-headers-`uname -r`

Get the modules

Get the modules for your webcam:

wget http://www.rastageeks.org/downloads/ov51x-jpeg/ov51x-jpeg-1.5.7.tar.gz

(If this results in an error, check the [rastageeks ov51x-jpeg directory], maybe you have to download a newer version)

Ensure the drivers landed into a directory you know…

Extract the drivers

Move to the directory where your downloaded drivers are, and extract the source files from the tar files.

tar -xvf ov51x-jpeg*

and Change directory to where your sources are:

cd ov51x-jpeg*

Prepare the installation files

make

Compile

Compile the modules:

sudo make install

Install

And install them:

sudo depmod -A
sudo modprobe ov51x-jpeg

You should now be able to enjoy images from your webcam!

Skype

Now to get it working with Skype, open a terminal (or use the existing one open) and type

sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.conf

And in the gedit window that appears, type in the following at the end of the file

# Work With Skype
options ov51x-jpeg forceblock=1

Then save the file, close the window and then in the terminal, type

sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/options

And in the gedit window that appears, type in the following at the end of the file

# Work With Skype
options ov51x-jpeg forceblock=1

And it should now work with Skype! (Note: You will need to go into Skype and set it to use it separately)

Have Fun!