Reflection Design

Dustpuppy gets eyes! Making orbicam run on ubuntu

My laptop, affectionately called 'dustpuppy', is of course running Ubuntu Linux 7.04. After my basic install i had only a few things that didn't work. The primary non-functional issues was the integrated webcam and the flash card reader. And now webcam works.

How to set it up. Well for this i mainly followed a tutorial available on the Ubuntu Forums by brazzmonkey. However i recreated it for personal use here. Im using an Acer Travelmate 4280 laptop, with 1.3 megapixel Orbicam integrated.

First we need to make sure that the camera is detected

lsusb

and you should be getting something like this

Bus 005 Device 002: ID 046d:0896 Logitech, Inc.

Now we need to install some prerequisites to make able to build the drivers for the webcam

sudo apt-get install build-essential linux-headers-$(uname -r)

Now for getting the drivers. The main download page is here: http://mxhaard.free.fr/download.html
At the time of writing the newest driver is gspcav1-20070508.tar.gz
Lets unpack them

tar zxvf gspcav1-20070508.tar.gz

Compile and install the drivers

cd gspcav1-20070508/
make
sudo make install

Now we have the drivers compiled and installed. A personal note. On this laptop i moved the drivers to /opt/gspcav1-20070508/ before compiling, and installing. Just because i like to keep my own personal order in the folders.

Next we need to tune the module before loading. I will explain why later, but its needed for colors to be shown correctly.

sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/options

Add this to the end of the file to make sure colors are displayed correctly. Unless of course you are happy looking like a smurf

options gspca force_rgb=0

In the original tutorial the value was supposed to be 1, but for my laptop setting it to 0 seems to be correct value. Now save the file and close gedit.

Now we are ready to load the module, so we can check out webcam is working.

sudo modprobe gspca

Now check that the device node exists.

ls /dev/video*

The result should be something like mine here:

/dev/video0

If you did get a similar result the webcam is now ready for testing. First we need to install a webcam application to use for testing. Camorama is perfect for this. If you dont already have it installed just use this command

sudo apt-get install camorama

And now we can start the application with

camorama

But whats this ?! You seem blue in the face.. have no fear my blue friend. In Camorama under 'view' select 'show effects'.Now the effects pane is added to the dialog. Right click and 'add filter' and select the 'color correction filter' Now you should instantly become more humanised colors.

The trick here is that its only camorama, so far that i know of, that reverses the colors. So using the color correction filter it shows correctly. Other applications don't need this. So fire up Ekiga softphone to further test out your webcam and in general just have fun

Hope this helped some people, especially users with this specific laptop. Questions, or comments can be left in comments section

source: ACER Orbicam integrated webcams now supported by GSPCA

Image taken with the webcam:

gDesklets – widgets for linux

Okay this time i want to share how to install, setup and use gDesklets for linux. More specifically as i always do using Ubuntu Linux. Its a small easy guide and there isn't a lot too it, so lets get started:

Installation

First we, of course, need to get gDesklets installed. Right now i am writing from Ubuntu Feisty Fawn Herd 5, and gDesklets was already installed. But should you be using an earlier version of Ubuntu just open up a terminal (applications -> accessories -> terminal) and type in the following command:

sudo apt-get install gdesklets

It should prompt for your admin password, and after you enter it gDesklets will install. Expected more ? Well thats it

Configuration

There is not alot to configure. We want gDesklets to startup everytime with gnome. So under System -> Preferences -> Session we will find a way to make gDesklets startup automatically. Under 'Startup Programs' we click 'new' and both under name, and command enter 'gdesklets'.
Now gDesklets will start automatically with you gnome. Since we are not a big fan of restarting just to see what we just installed we want to boot up the gDesklets deamon right away. Open up the terminal again and type:

gdesklets &

Now the gdesklets icon should pop up in your system tray in the upper right hand corner.

Now you can right-click the icon and either select manage desklets or configuration. There is not a big deal to configure, so we are going to jump straight to 'manage desklets'.

Managing desklets

In the manage desklets dialog you can select various desklets to add to your desktop. Each desklet can be individually configured by right clicking it. Just to get you started we will add one of my favorite desklets, a simple countdown timer.

Under the category 'Misc/Utilities' you will find 'Countdown2'. simply double-click it, and move your cursor to the desktop. You will see the desklet following your cursor, and you can click again to drop it.

Now you have your first desklet running, and it will start automatically upon next reboot.

Finally a note about my own personal experience with desklets. They are awesome But not without grief. Some desklets wont work, some will only work with limited functionality ect. But even with the most basic desklets working they are still nice to have lying around. I especially use my countdown a lot for knowing how long too upcoming deadlines.

Enjoy the world of linux with desklets

VPN and Network Manager in Ubuntu

Today i want to share my little knowledge about vpn connections using NetworkManager.

Network Manager in case you dont already know is an amazing piece of software for your linux distro allowing easy hazzle free networking when switching to wireless network environments.
An example would be the windows wireless list were its possible to see all the wireless networks found and click to access a specific one. Network Manager works much the same way.

However one functionality that i know some people use, amongst others myself, is VPN connection. Its available for Network Manager through a plug in, and i can say it works great. Though there are a few quirks that i have discovered through my use of it, and it can also be a little hard to get a hold of Why i dont know, so to help out i have provided a download link at the end of this article.

First off to enable the use of the VPN plugin install VPNC from synaptic. You can also use the terminal and install using this command:

sudo apt-get install vpnc

If you for some reason forget to install this you will risk Network Manager simply crashing / disappearing on you when you try to connect to a VPN network. I had this bug recently and didn't realize it until later when i installed vpnc and it worked. I haven't investigated whether or not this is a known bug in Network Manager yet but in any case a valid point to know.

So now we have installed the necessary applications for the vpn plugin to function correctly. Download the .deb file provided at the end of the article and simply double click to install it. After install you might need to reboot network manager to get your vpn plugin showing up. Either reboot the old fashioned way, restart gnome or open the terminal and do the following:

sudo killall NetworkManager

sudo NetworkManager

Now when you left-click your network manager icon you should get a menu item called "VPN Connections" at the bottom. Now all thats left is simply to add your vpn network details and you are ready to connect.
I have personally found this to work easily and well on my university network, but different vpn networks might not be that easy. But most of this should be pretty much straight forward.

I hope this helped some people and especially the need to have "vpnc" installed before trying to establish a vpn connection could prove useful. So go forth and connect to vpn networks all over the world my penguins!
Class dismissed!

Download Network Manager VPN plugin: (.deb) (.rar)
PS: The version of Network Manager im currently using with this plugin is 0.6.3, so other versions might experience trouble.

Power up the terminal with Aliases !

A little quick trick on how to add some nifty aliases for your terminal. What is an alias exactly. Well it's another name for a specific command. A common alias e.g. could be to be able to type 'dir' (windows/DOS style) to list the directory content instead of 'ls'. Then you make an alias saying that the 'dir' command should be the same as typing the 'ls' command.

Now Ubuntu Linux comes with some of the common aliases already in your .bashrc file, but pr. default they are commented out. We simply need to uncomment them and also add our own extra ones if we want.

gedit .bashrc

Towards the bottom of the tile you should see a line like this:

# some more ls aliases

Uncomment the section below this line, by removing the '#' at the beginning of each line. You should now be able to use these aliases. If you wish to add extra aliases just follow the same syntax as the ones already there and you should be able to quickly add your own.

Personally i like to add an alias for the 'cd ..' command which allows me to also use 'cd..' without the space between 'cd' and '..'. An alias like that would like like this:

alias cd..='cd ..'

There you have it.. how to add your own aliases to the terminal. If you don't want to close the terminal for them to take effect, simply use the following command from your home directory to reload the .bashrc file.

source .bashrc

Enjoy the wonderful world of aliases

Use your own scripts in Ubuntu

Sometimes tedious tasks can be simplified by writing a simple bash script to perform them. Now i will not go into details on how to write scripts in Bash, but instead show how you can easily make your scripts available from anywhere in your terminal.

First off open up a terminal, and in your home directory create a directory named 'scripts'. As you might have guessed all your scripts will be placed here. For each script file you place here do the following:

chmod +x scriptname.sh

This will ensure that your script is executable, so no more need to type 'sh' before running the script. So now you have a directory of executable script, but so far they can only be accessed from either the directory itself, or by typing the path to the script. So we edit our .bashrc file a little. This file is located in your home directory.

gedit .bashrc

Scroll down to the bottom of the file, and add the following line

export PATH=$PATH:/home/USERNAME/scripts/

Of course replace USERNAME with your own username/homedirectory. Now reload the file with

source .bashrc

And you are all set. Any shell script you now place in scripts can be executed from anywhere on the system. The only requirement is to chmod +x on the file first