Dashcam as a webcam, no drivers possibly?

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1

Hi! I’m quite fresh to Linux after living with Bimbows for around 20 years. I also like to recycle old parts if possible. I’ve got an old Lenovo M83 SFF PC, which I installed Fedora 43 with KDE as it looked most appealing. I also replaced a dashcam in my car to something newer, so I’ve got a Campark DC02 laying around unused.
After connecting it to my Windows laptop, it showed option to be a “PC Camera”, which after selecting, it became normal PC camera with live feed. I thought as a random idea, why not learn about Linux and try using that M83 and Dashcam as a live-feed of my bird feeder.
In Windows, all I had to do is just to connect the Dashcam to PC via USB and it worked out-of-the-box.
So far, on Fedora, I’ve installed v41-utilis, uvcvideo and Camera app. Camera is not detected on the PC.
Now, I kinda understand that what I’m asking for is probably impossible, but how do I either find a drivers for that Dashcam or figure out what could be preventing it from working?
Is my train of thoughs even correct? Is it a drivers or there might be something else that I should look at?

lsmod | grep uvcvideo:

uvcvideo              192512  1
uvc                    12288  1 uvcvideo
videobuf2_vmalloc      20480  1 uvcvideo
videobuf2_v4l2         40960  1 uvcvideo
videobuf2_common      102400  4 videobuf2_vmalloc,videobuf2_v4l2,uvcvideo,videobuf2_memops
videodev              421888  2 videobuf2_v4l2,uvcvideo
mc                     94208  5 videodev,videobuf2_v4l2,uvcvideo,videobuf2_common

v4l2-ctl --list-devices does not show anything.
I also did
systemctl --user restart pipewire pipewire-pulse wireplumber
which I found somewhere online, did not work.

If it’s probably impossible to do, feel free to let me know. It’s not urgent, it’s not something that I NEED to have working, it’s just something that I’m curious if it’s possible.

Thanks!

1 Like
2

Hi and welcome to :fedora"

Does it show up in the output of lsusb ?
Thanks

3

Hi,
my aplologies, I forgot to include it. Only thing that is connected to USB in that PC is that camera. No keyboard/mouse as I use VNC and SSH to connect to it.
lsusb output:

Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 8087:8008 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 8087:07dc Intel Corp. Bluetooth wireless interface
Bus 002 Device 003: ID 1224:2825 Jieli Technology USB PHY 2.0
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 003 Device 002: ID 8087:8000 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub

I believe that the “Jieli Technology” might be this one, yet I might be wrong.

4

Is it indeed the camera - mixed results reported but it sounds like it’ll work ok for what you want to do with it - https://linux-hardware.org/?id=usb:1224-2a25

5

Does it show up if you install and run guvcview?
sudo dnf install guvcview
If you run guvcview from the command line what do you see?

6

Hi,
that’s what is showing up.

GUVCVIEW: version 2.1.0
GUVCVIEW: couldn't open /root/.config/guvcview2/video0 for read: No such file or directory
GUVCVIEW: not build with sdl2 support (rebuild with --enable-sdl2)
GUVCVIEW: using sfml render instead
V4L2_CORE: (UVCIOC_CTRL_MAP) Error: No such file or directory
V4L2_CORE: (UVCIOC_CTRL_MAP) Error: No such file or directory
V4L2_CORE: (UVCIOC_CTRL_MAP) Error: No such file or directory
V4L2_CORE: (UVCIOC_CTRL_MAP) Error: No such file or directory
V4L2_CORE: (UVCIOC_CTRL_MAP) Error: No such file or directory
V4L2_CORE: (UVCIOC_CTRL_MAP) Error: No such file or directory
V4L2_CORE: (UVCIOC_CTRL_MAP) Error: No such file or directory
V4L2_CORE: (UVCIOC_CTRL_MAP) Error: No such file or directory
V4L2_CORE: (UVCIOC_CTRL_MAP) Error: No such file or directory
ALSA lib pcm_dsnoop.c:572:(snd_pcm_dsnoop_open) [error.pcm] unable to open slave
ALSA lib pcm_dmix.c:1000:(snd_pcm_dmix_open) [error.pcm] unable to open slave
ALSA lib pcm.c:2722:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) [error.pcm] Unknown PCM cards.pcm.rear
ALSA lib pcm.c:2722:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) [error.pcm] Unknown PCM cards.pcm.center_lfe
ALSA lib pcm.c:2722:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) [error.pcm] Unknown PCM cards.pcm.side
ALSA lib pcm_dmix.c:1000:(snd_pcm_dmix_open) [error.pcm] unable to open slave
Failed to open X11 display; make sure the DISPLAY environment variable is set correctly version 2.1.0
7

Does it work if you run as a normal user vice root?

8

Normal user output:

V4L2_CORE: ERROR opening V4L2 interface for /dev/video0
V4L2_CORE: ERROR opening V4L2 interface for /dev/video1
GUVCVIEW: version 2.1.0
GUVCVIEW: couldn't open /home/m83/.config/guvcview2/video0 for read: No such file or directory
GUVCVIEW: not build with sdl2 support (rebuild with --enable-sdl2)
GUVCVIEW: using sfml render instead
V4L2_CORE: ERROR opening V4L interface: Permission denied
GUVCVIEW (1): Guvcview error
         no video device (/dev/video0) found
GUVCVIEW: (GUI) Gtk3 can't open display
Guvcview error: no video device (/dev/video0) found
9

what does
lsusb -d 1224:2825 -v
look like.

10

Hi,
I’ve posted output on pastebin as it will be WAY too long to look at properly.

https://pastebin.com/quCwG9rW

Does anything tell you something?

11 
GUVCVIEW: not build with sdl2 support (rebuild with --enable-sdl2)

How did you install gucview?

Fedora switched to sdl3, so strange that gucview wants sdl2.

12

As requested few posts before, I used the command sudo dnf install guvcview and that’s what I’ve been using.
By running it again, I’ve got:

m83@fedora:~$ sudo dnf install guvcview
Updating and loading repositories:
Repositories loaded.
Package "guvcview-2.1.0-7.fc43.x86_64" is already installed.

Nothing to do.
13

I lastest working probe is with kernel 6.3.9-1 from 2023.
https://linux-hardware.org/?probe=1917d24a87
https://linux-hardware.org/?probe=1917d24a87&log=lsusb

The one that jumps out at me is the interface descriptor:

bInterfaceClass         8 Mass Storage                                                                                          
bInterfaceSubClass      6 SCSI                                                      
bInterfaceProtocol     80 Bulk-Only  
iInterface              0 

bInterfaceClass        14 Video                                               
bInterfaceSubClass      1 Video Control                                       
bInterfaceProtocol      0    
iInterface              6 USB CAMERA

Not quite sure where to go from here

14

Hi,
thank you for your help regardless. Could you please, if you have time, explain what was your thinking process when trying to gather more information? What were you thinking the problem might be? What would you look into more if you were in my position?
Like I said, I’m fairly new to Linux and most of my experiance is from Windows, so I like to learn how to approach problems like that in future.

15

And a few more ideas out of left field.
Do the indications change if you use another USB cable?
Does it have a SD card in it? Does removing that change anything?

Getting some additional information:
For your issue, It might also be good to post the logs journalctl --no-hostname --no-pager -b -g usb
And maybe install inxi sudo dnf install inxi
and then:
inxi -aGxxzJ

Mostly trying to gather information if the device was detected and looked like it should be working.
lsusb to see if the device is seen.
guvcview seemed like an easy tool to use to see if it was working.
https://linux-hardware.org/ is a great resource for researching hardware and seeing if it works and/or what other people have experienced.

Thanks, sorry for not being more helpful.

2 Likes
16

Just learning about existance of those tools is a lot. I know it’s probably common knowledge and I did encounter lsusb before, but there’s always something more that I could learn.
And answering your questions:
Using another cable doesn’t change anything, connecting it with the same cable and using it the same way as it is connected now but to Windows PC works 100% fine.
It does not have SD card in it and when I put it in, nothing changed (it wasn’t even detected as a storage when you turn on the “PC Camera” mode. When you plug the Dashcam in, it does nothing in relation to PC, but on dashcam display itself, it gives you couple of options, like “Use as Dashcam” and “PC Camera”. Only when you turn on “PC Camera” it essentially becomes one.

Regarding the logs;

Journalctl:

https://pastebin.com/JDADeXbZ

and Inxi:

https://pastebin.com/pn22Pk5e

Like I said before, all of the aspect of “let’s use the dashcam to watch birds” is just an excersise to learn more about Linux. It’s not something important or a major issue. I just saw that it works on Windows and wanted to see if I can use Linux for it to learn about the system.

17

I think dash cams typically save video, so it is normal to see both camera and USB storage. There does appear to be a problem with guvcview — either a missing dependency on sdl2-compat or dropped support for old devices. Linux camera support has generally been good, but as devs age out or move to better paying AI jobs, gaps in support for older device are appearing. Fedora has Source : guvcview-2.1.0-7.fc43.src.rpm, but upstream has https://sourceforge.net/projects/guvcview/files/source/guvcview-src-2.2.2.tar.bz2. Maybe Gnome Cheese works.

1 Like
18

It does need to be updated, but it looks like SDL2 was removed with this commit.

19

So… would you recommend to install the older version, before 2.1.0.7 or is there another way to make it work?

20

The recent change for Fedora says “Switch from SDL2 to SFML to fix crashes on GNOME”, so we still don’t know why yours is looking for SDL2. You may have obsolete packages or configurations. Try creating a test user login with the default configuration to rule out settings in your login.