Logitech QuickCam Messenger on Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty)

14. June 2009, by Alex

Thanks to everyone helping me out, making this instruction better. Once again, this shall help you getting a Logitech QuickCam Messenger (ID: 046d:08f0) running on Linux Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty) using Skype. Please don’t waste any time posting instructions for other webcams. We don’t care!

To make sure, you got the right cam, plug it into your computer.
Check if your camera matches my ID by running:

lsusb | grep QuickCam

There should be something like this:

Bus 008 Device 003: ID 046d:08f0 Logitech, Inc. QuickCam Messenger

If your ID matches, please continue, otherwise you might be lucky and can start installing Gstfakevideo straight away. However this “Howto” was only tested for a QuickCam Messenger with the ID above. For other IDs please take a look here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SkypeWebCams

All you need before we start:

sudo apt-get install libgstreamer0.10-dev pkg-config subversion linux-headers-$(uname -r) build-essential

Remove the old quickcam_messenger module because it will not deliver the correct colors for our cam. If you do find a solution for this problem, please leave a comment! Thanks. Anyway removing the installed module:

sudo rmmod quickcam_messenger

To make sure it is not going to be loaded again we add the following line at the end of /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

blacklist quickcam_messenger

Download the new qcmessener module:

wget http://home.mag.cx/messenger/source/qc-usb-messenger-1.8.tar.gz
tar xzvf qc-usb-messenger-1.8.tar.gz
cd qc-usb-messenger-1.8

Apply this patch:

wget -v http://kuhrti.de/files/qc_2.6.28_patch.txt
patch -p0 < qc_2.6.28_patch.txt

Continue installing:

make
sudo make install
sudo insmod ./qcmessenger.ko

Ignore the “Kernel configuration is invalid.” errors.

Give it a test:

sudo qcset /dev/video0 compat=dblbuf
sudo gst-launch-0.10 v4lsrc device=/dev/video0 ! ffmpegcolorspace ! ximagesink

If every thing works go on and install Gstfakevideo:

svn checkout http://gstfakevideo.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ gstfakevideo
cd gstfakevideo
make
sudo make install

Create a new file (i.e. in your home directory) called skype.sh and add these lines:

#!/bin/sh
gstfakevideo v4lsrc device=/dev/video1 ! ffmpegcolorspace

And run:

chmod a+x skype.sh

Now reload the module

sudo rmmod qcmessenger
sudo modprobe qcmessenger compatible=6 video_nr=1

Info: run

sudo modinfo qcmessenger

to view more options.

Create a new file /etc/modprobe.d/qcmessenger.conf and add:

options qcmessenger compatible=6 video_nr=1

This makes sure, that your webcam will always be /dev/video1 (as /dev/vidoe0 is needed for gstfakevideo) and uses “dblbuf” (correct colors).

Add your account to the “video” group:

sudo usermod -a -G video <YOUR USER NAME>

Finally fire up Skype by running skype.sh. That’s it!

Please leave a comment if you got some problems or want to give me feedback.

Here is a test image.

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