Feels like a lot of current hacks are about how to overcome the limit of a totally optional software prison rather than be creative with what can be done with the unexpected combination of software and hardware.
That's not actually progress but a regression due to walled gardens.
Thanks for opening up ... but also why even get to such a bad spot in the first place?
It's not that hard to write a webcam kernel extension now, apple iirc provide a sample (but I think I based mine off someone else's implementation for passing buffers around to the sink)
Here's mine, turning a kinect1's depth stream into a camera device
> I clipped it onto my LEGO RC car base to make a spy car, and drove it around as far as the USB cable reached from my little Sony VAIO laptop.
Neat. A few years ago I made a wireless version with more modern LEGO car and RPi camera. Great fun to drive around until the latency gets you stuck and you have to pry it from behind the sofa :)
Not the first time I've seen this, but this one really hit me for some reason.
I genuinely don't understand why someone would want to work like this. There's obviously no practical use in having a 26-year-old novelty webcam work at 5fps. What made it interesting was the process of figuring it out and writing it up, which others could then read and learn from.
Instead it looks like this 'author' just watched an LLM code it and write up for them, and published it unedited. What is anyone getting out of this completely soulless process?
Thanks to Linux, but also thanks to OBS's virtual webcam for being signed and allowing any arbitrary applications to push frames to it?
That kind of makes Apple's signed camera extension requirement a bit useless, since any application that wants to be a camera, or wants to support some odball USB camera, could just ship the OBS one?
Smells a bit insecure to me, but also helpful as a tinkerer...
Fair point. The OBS camera extension exposes a sink stream, so any local process can feed it frames. That's how obscam works without its own signed extension. I think the bigger protection is the system extension approval and the camera permission prompts in each app, but it does make the signing requirement feel thin. Without it, I couldn't have shipped this with a free developer account.
> That kind of makes Apple's signed camera extension requirement a bit useless
It also makes me question of how much in good faith that requirement was made in the first place, or if it's just there to make more money for Apple & Friends.
It came with the LEGO & Steven Spielberg MovieMaker set, so stop motion was the idea. As a kid, I clipped it onto a LEGO RC car and drove it round the house as a spy car, as far as the USB cable reached. :)
Incredible happenstance! I just bought the same exact cam + a few other “vintage” USB ones on ebay to film a rave happening at my place in a month.
I’m excited to try the IBM webcams, and am very tempted by an original connectix (which doesn’t have usb)
Do folks here have other recommendations for unique usb cameras?
A flir (heat) cam is tempting ofc. Anything else that’s unique and forgotten?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EyeToy
Feels like a lot of current hacks are about how to overcome the limit of a totally optional software prison rather than be creative with what can be done with the unexpected combination of software and hardware.
That's not actually progress but a regression due to walled gardens.
Thanks for opening up ... but also why even get to such a bad spot in the first place?
It's not that hard to write a webcam kernel extension now, apple iirc provide a sample (but I think I based mine off someone else's implementation for passing buffers around to the sink)
Here's mine, turning a kinect1's depth stream into a camera device
https://github.com/NewChromantics/PopKinectMacWebcam
So in this case, the hack is unneccessary, there is no limit of which you speak
> I clipped it onto my LEGO RC car base to make a spy car, and drove it around as far as the USB cable reached from my little Sony VAIO laptop.
Neat. A few years ago I made a wireless version with more modern LEGO car and RPi camera. Great fun to drive around until the latency gets you stuck and you have to pry it from behind the sofa :)
https://www.printables.com/model/343226-lego-42099-raspberry...
So this is how it is going to be? AI written everywhere?
> I read that driver and copied the protocol: which registers to write, in which order, to wake the sensor up and start streaming.
> legocam is GPL-2.0, like the driver it learned from.
Please write yourself.
Not the first time I've seen this, but this one really hit me for some reason.
I genuinely don't understand why someone would want to work like this. There's obviously no practical use in having a 26-year-old novelty webcam work at 5fps. What made it interesting was the process of figuring it out and writing it up, which others could then read and learn from.
Instead it looks like this 'author' just watched an LLM code it and write up for them, and published it unedited. What is anyone getting out of this completely soulless process?
Well, it makes sense that the author of the driver should write about it.
> It runs at about 5 frames per second. That's the limit of USB 1.1 and the sensor clock, not the code.
I agree. For basically two or three short paragraphs too...
When I scroll through someone's personal blog and every single post is AI written I get that AI nausea/fatigue feeling.
Well done! It's crazy that Apple forces you to pay to sign your own software. Another reason to never buy any of their products.
A nominal fee keeps out most of the Linux users.
Thanks to Linux, but also thanks to OBS's virtual webcam for being signed and allowing any arbitrary applications to push frames to it?
That kind of makes Apple's signed camera extension requirement a bit useless, since any application that wants to be a camera, or wants to support some odball USB camera, could just ship the OBS one?
Smells a bit insecure to me, but also helpful as a tinkerer...
Why did people flag benkelly’s reply? I don’t understand.
Fair point. The OBS camera extension exposes a sink stream, so any local process can feed it frames. That's how obscam works without its own signed extension. I think the bigger protection is the system extension approval and the camera permission prompts in each app, but it does make the signing requirement feel thin. Without it, I couldn't have shipped this with a free developer account.
> That kind of makes Apple's signed camera extension requirement a bit useless
It also makes me question of how much in good faith that requirement was made in the first place, or if it's just there to make more money for Apple & Friends.
Next project: Use Game Boy Camera as a Webcam
This has already been done:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Gameboy/comments/ikpzs0/game_boy_ca...
Nice! Can you record some video with it?
This person is still running macOS 15?
Guilty! It's an Intel MacBook Pro, and I haven't got round to upgrading it yet.
What's the typical usage of a Lego's webcam?
It came with the LEGO & Steven Spielberg MovieMaker set, so stop motion was the idea. As a kid, I clipped it onto a LEGO RC car and drove it round the house as a spy car, as far as the USB cable reached. :)
Stop motion animation of your little lego adventures.