VOICE Home Page: http://www.os2voice.org
[Newsletter Index]
[Previous Page] [Next Page]
[Feature Index]
|
VOICE Home Page: http://www.os2voice.org |
August 2002
[Newsletter Index]
|
| By Dominik Chmaj © August 2002 |
gPhoto is a cross-platform digital
camera library written by Scott Fritzinger (and others). It was ported to OS/2 by
Bart van Leeuwen. The program is released under the Library GNU License. It is freeware
and it is still developing. The latest build (v2rc5) now supports USB port connections.
Of course it also allows access to memory in cameras connected by LPT or serial
connection. gPhoto supports 201 known cameras, but it also works with more then
those on the official list as many others are the same as the listed ones. For example
my camera (Media-Tech
mt-406 - "Sphinx") is recognized as "Tiger Fast Flicks"
- so it's compatible with it. According to the latest announcement for cameras not
supported by Gphoto2/2 the upcoming Device Driver Fixpack 3 will provide support
for USB Mass Storage Devices which will make all MSD compatible cameras work e.g.
Fuji Finepix series.
gPhoto2/2 uses the WarpIN installer. So you first have to have WarpIN installed: http://www.xworkplace.org/proj_warpin.html. The installer creates a folder on the desktop with 4 objects, a readme, a list of the program authors, a text file outlining how to report bugs and obtain a log file, and the last an OS/2 command window object that opens in the gPhoto2 directory.
The WarpIN install warns that if you need USB support, you have to manually altar your config.sys file. If you select to have WarpIN update your config.sys file, it will insert a line to load a USB driver specific for gPhoto2/2 - gph2usb.sys. If you don't have a USB setup, this will cause an error message on bootup.
gPhoto2/2 has several options to manipulate data in the camera. It is still a command line application, so you use command line options to tell gPhoto2 what to do. You can read, write, make or erase directories. In my camera (an mt406) I have no problems for accessing anything in my camera's memory. I was very surprised when it worked when I just installed the program and ran it with the default parameters. The program detected my camera, and the next command was for downloading files from the camera memory (gphoto -P). The program ran again and downloaded all files (photos and a small movie) from the camera.
There were some differences to windows driver for that came with my camera. First of all, gPhoto is a command line program designed to for quick access to memory in digital cameras, so if I run it the program will execute and then exit while the Windows driver is running all the time. Perhaps that is good for some, but not for me. I must turn on my camera and when I don't use it more than 1 minute it will go into standby mode again so I had to turn it on again. In my mind it should be on all the time because it uses usb port to get energy, not batteries. Second what I saw is speed of downloading files, is slower than in Windows. Maybe I had to change something in the configuration, but I don't know how. Unfortunately gPhoto at this build level doesn't support my hardware as well to switch anything :( When I would try, the program reports that it doesn't recognize the camera, even when I define it. In the readme.txt there is only a list of written commands to set up port speed, but for me this didn't change anything, except that the program wasn't working at all anymore.
Of course this program is still developing. The authors have announced a frontend for the program, but now you can get full access to you're camera. There are of course some bugs that should be fixed. For example if I want to download a file that already exists in my destination directory, the program will ask me about overwriting the file, but the system shows a message about driver, which can't understand the command and I can only exit program.
I think that the best way for accessing memory in digital camera would be for an application to support Netdrive with a plugin. If a camera is supported by Netdrive you could see your data on a separate logical drive. Of course gPhoto is still beta, so perhaps this will happen in the future.
gPhoto is the first os/2 program that lets you access memory thought USB. This worked well for me. I just had to install basic USB support, then gPhoto, one reboot and it was working.
Unfortunately I failed to get some batch files I wrote to run. :( Gphoto runs in some strange way so I could not catch that moment when it is starts and ends, but I have tried to write only simple cmd file. Everyone who is interested in gPhoto should download the program from: ftp://ftp.netlabs.org/pub/gphoto/gphoto2.wpi, it's WarpIN installer is simple so anyone should be able to handle it :)
To display all supported cameras:
gphoto2 --list-cameras
Number of supported cameras: 201
Supported cameras:
"AEG Snap 300" (TESTING)
"Agfa CL18"
"Agfa ePhoto 1280"
"Agfa ePhoto 1680"
"Agfa ePhoto 307"
"Agfa ePhoto 780"
"Agfa ePhoto 780C"
"Aiptek PenCam Trio" (TESTING)
"Apple QuickTake 200"
"Argus DC-100"
"Argus DC-1500" (TESTING)
"Argus DC-2000"
"Barbie"
"CAMERA MODEL"
"Canon Digital IXUS"
"Canon Digital IXUS 300"
"Canon Digital IXUS 330"
"Canon DIGITAL IXUS v"
"Canon EOS D30"
"Canon EOS D60"
"Canon IXY DIGITAL"
"Canon IXY DIGITAL 300"
"Canon PowerShot A10"
"Canon PowerShot A20"
"Canon PowerShot A30"
"Canon PowerShot A40"
"Canon PowerShot A5 Zoom"
"Canon PowerShot A50"
"Canon PowerShot G1"
"Canon PowerShot G2"
"Canon PowerShot Pro70"
"Canon PowerShot Pro90 IS"
"Canon PowerShot S10"
"Canon PowerShot S100"
"Canon PowerShot S110"
"Canon PowerShot S20"
"Canon PowerShot S200"
"Canon PowerShot S30"
"Canon PowerShot S300"
"Canon PowerShot S40"
"Casio QV10" (EXPERIMENTAL)
"Casio QV100" (EXPERIMENTAL)
"Casio QV10A" (EXPERIMENTAL)
"Casio QV300" (EXPERIMENTAL)
"Casio QV70" (EXPERIMENTAL)
"Casio QV700" (EXPERIMENTAL)
"Casio QV770" (EXPERIMENTAL)
"Chinon ES-1000"
"DE300 Canon Inc."
"Digitaldream DIGITAL 2000"
"Dynatron Dynacam 800"
"Epson PhotoPC 3000z"
"Epson PhotoPC 500"
"Epson PhotoPC 550"
"Epson PhotoPC 600"
"Epson PhotoPC 700"
"Epson PhotoPC 800"
"Fuji IX-1" (TESTING)
"Hawking DC120 Pocketcam" (TESTING)
"Hot Wheels"
"HP PhotoSmart"
"HP PhotoSmart 318" (TESTING)
"HP PhotoSmart 612" (TESTING)
"HP PhotoSmart 715" (TESTING)
"HP PhotoSmart C20"
"HP PhotoSmart C200"
"HP PhotoSmart C30"
"HP PhotoSmart C500/618/912"
"IOMagic MagicImage 400" (TESTING)
"IOMagic MagicImage 420"
"Jenoptik JD11"
"Jenoptik JD12 800ff"
"KBGear JamCam"
"Kodak DC-240 (PTP)" (TESTING)
"Kodak DC-4800" (TESTING)
"Kodak DC120"
"Kodak DC220"
"Kodak DC240"
"Kodak DC260"
"Kodak DC265"
"Kodak DC280"
"Kodak DC290"
"Kodak DC3200"
"Kodak DC3400"
"Kodak DC5000"
"Kodak DX-3215" (TESTING)
"Kodak DX-3500" (TESTING)
"Kodak DX-3600" (TESTING)
"Kodak DX-3700" (TESTING)
"Kodak DX-3900" (TESTING)
"Kodak DX-4900" (TESTING)
"Kodak MC3" (TESTING)
"Konica Q-EZ"
"Konica Q-M100"
"Konica Q-M100V"
"Konica Q-M200"
"l'elegante by DigitalDream" (TESTING)
"l'espion by DigitalDream" (TESTING)
"l'esprit by DigitalDream" (TESTING)
"la ronde by DigitalDream" (TESTING)
"Micromaxx Digital Camera" (TESTING)
"Mustek MDC 800" (EXPERIMENTAL)
"Mustek VDC-3500"
"Nick Click"
"Nikon CoolPix 100"
"Nikon CoolPix 300"
"Nikon CoolPix 600"
"Nikon CoolPix 700"
"Nikon CoolPix 800"
"Nikon CoolPix 880"
"Nikon CoolPix 885"
"Nikon CoolPix 900"
"Nikon CoolPix 900S"
"Nikon CoolPix 910"
"Nikon CoolPix 950"
"Nikon CoolPix 950S"
"Nikon CoolPix 990"
"Olympus C-1000L"
"Olympus C-1400L"
"Olympus C-1400XL"
"Olympus C-2000Z"
"Olympus C-2020Z"
"Olympus C-2040Z"
"Olympus C-2100UZ"
"Olympus C-2500L"
"Olympus C-2500Z"
"Olympus C-3000Z"
"Olympus C-3030Z"
"Olympus C-400"
"Olympus C-400L"
"Olympus C-410"
"Olympus C-410L"
"Olympus C-420"
"Olympus C-420L"
"Olympus C-800"
"Olympus C-800L"
"Olympus C-820"
"Olympus C-820L"
"Olympus C-830L"
"Olympus C-840L"
"Olympus C-860L"
"Olympus C-900 Zoom"
"Olympus C-900L Zoom"
"Olympus D-100Z"
"Olympus D-200L"
"Olympus D-220L"
"Olympus D-300L"
"Olympus D-320L"
"Olympus D-330R"
"Olympus D-340L"
"Olympus D-340R"
"Olympus D-360L"
"Olympus D-400L Zoom"
"Olympus D-450Z"
"Olympus D-460Z"
"Olympus D-500L"
"Olympus D-600L"
"Olympus D-600XL"
"Olympus D-620L"
"Panasonic Coolshot NV-DCF5E"
"Panasonic DC1000"
"Panasonic DC1580"
"Phoebe Smartcam" (TESTING)
"Polaroid PDC 2300Z"
"Polaroid PDC 640"
"Praktica QD500"
"Praktica QD800"
"Quark Probe 99"
"QuickPix QP1" (TESTING)
"Relisys Dimera 3500"
"Ricoh RDC-300" (EXPERIMENTAL)
"Ricoh RDC-300Z" (EXPERIMENTAL)
"Ricoh RDC-4300" (EXPERIMENTAL)
"Samsung digimax 800k"
"Sanyo DSC-X300"
"Sanyo DSC-X350"
"Sanyo VPC-G200"
"Sanyo VPC-G200EX"
"Sanyo VPC-G210"
"Sanyo VPC-G250"
"Sierra Imaging SD640"
"SiPix Web2" (EXPERIMENTAL)
"Sony DCR-PC100"
"Sony DSC-F1" (EXPERIMENTAL)
"Sony DSC-F55"
"Sony DSC-F707V" (TESTING)
"Sony DSC-P30" (TESTING)
"Sony DSC-P5" (TESTING)
"Sony DSC-P50" (TESTING)
"Sony DSC-S75" (TESTING)
"Sony DSC-S85" (TESTING)
"Sony MSAC-SR1"
"Sony MVC-CD300" (TESTING)
"Sony TRV-20E"
"STM USB Dual-mode camera" (TESTING)
"STV0680" (TESTING)
"Tiger Fast Flicks" (EXPERIMENTAL)
"Trust DC-3500"
"UMAX AstraPen" (TESTING)
"USB PTP Class Camera" (TESTING)
"WWF"
References:
|
[Feature Index]
editor@os2voice.org
[Previous Page] [Newsletter Index] [Next Page]
VOICE Home Page: http://www.os2voice.org