Logitech Quickcam Pro 5000 on SuSE Linux

To replace a Phillips ToUcam Pro which broke after being squeezed too hard into its "egg case" we got an unidentified second-hand webcam. With a flexible mount, it fits easily any screen but did not work out-of-the box either under Linux or XP.

This post describes the steps to install the camera under Linux and the next post explains a trick to make it work with the "latest" skype video (version 2.0.0.72).

Logitech Quickcam Pro 5000

We use openSUSE (tested on 10.3 and 11.0) but it is trivial to make it work with other popular distributions (e.g. Ubuntu, etc) by using their package installation tools.

[Update: Tested also on SuSE 11.2]

1. Does the device connect to a USB bus?

USB devices may be listed with the command lsusb. After the webcam is connected to a usb port the result of lsusb should include one more line. In my case:

Bus 003 Device 005: ID 046d:08c5 Logitech, Inc.

So, this webcam identifies itself as 046d:08c5. From this it was possible to identify the model of the our webcam. Many people have a version of the Quickcam Pro 5000 reporting another ID:

Bus 001 Device 003: ID 046d:08ce Logitech, Inc. QuickCam Pro 5000

Anyway, if you see one of these your webcam is connected.

2. Installing the UVC drivers

As can be seen from the devices page from the Quickcam Team, the Quickcam Pro 5000 is a USB Video Class (UVC) compatible camera device (there are compatibility issues with some USB controllers).

[You might need to select a repository of drivers for webcams. In YaST->Community Repositories, select "openSUSE BuildService - Drivers for webcams"]

To install the driver in SuSE open YaST->Software Management (search with "uvc" for convenience) and install packages uvcvideo (choose the one for your kernel, usually uvcvideo-kmp-default) and luvciew (useful to test the camera). You will also need packages related to Video4linux. We have libv4l and v4l-conf installed (in YaST search "v4L" and install if necessary):

3. Testing

After rebooting, connect the webcam and run luvcview from a terminal. You should see a window such as this (after removing the lens cap and pointing the webcam to a postcard from London :-)

Photo of the luvcview window (not true image quality).

That's it! The Logitech Quickcam Pro 5000 is now working.