EasyCAP for RaspberryPI

[f1faq]

I've opened a new topic to not pollute the 2MS DATV one

My EasyCAP that works comes from Ebay / seller bin361
Name : Easycap USB 2.0 Audio Video VHS to DVD Converter Capture Card Adapter New
Item number : 391311205053

v4l2-ctl -d 0 --info :
$ Driver Info (not using libv4l2):
Driver name : uvcvideo
Card type : UVC Camera (534d:0021)
Bus info : usb-3f980000.usb-1.3
Driver version: 4.4.23
Capabilities : 0x84200001
Video Capture
Streaming
Extended Pix Format
Device Capabilities
Device Caps : 0x04200001
Video Capture
Streaming
Extended Pix Format

I tried the Hauppauge USB-Live 2 and it does NOT work !

v4l2-ctl -d 0 --info
$ Driver Info (not using libv4l2):
Driver name : cx231xx
Card type : Hauppauge USB Live 2
Bus info : usb-3f980000.usb-1.3
Driver version: 4.4.23
Capabilities : 0x85200011
Video Capture
VBI Capture
Read/Write
Streaming
Extended Pix Format
Device Capabilities
Device Caps : 0x05200001
Video Capture
Read/Write
Streaming
Extended Pix Format

Christian - F1FAQ

[G0EID]

I think the problems lot of us are seeing is that the device node /dev/video0
is not always going to be pointing to the same physical device, it could point to the Pi Camera or the EzCAP?
It depends on what device is plugged-in or used first?

On my system with an EzCAP connected, during boot, it is assigned /dev/video0
The problem comes when we try to use the CAMMPEG2 input, the v4l driver for the Pi Camera is only loaded
at that point, and being the second video device found will be assigned /dev/video1

I have added a couple of files to my system.

/etc/modules-load.d/picamera.conf has just one line
bcm2835-v4l2
which loads the Pi Camera driver early so it gets to be /dev/video0.

And in /etc/udev/rules.d/ezcap.rules I put this line..

SUBSYSTEM=="video4linux", ATTRS{idVendor}=="1b71", ATTRS{idProduct}=="3002", MODE:="0660", SYMLINK+="ezcap0"

This line is going to be different depending on which EzCAP device you have..
It makes a link /dev/ezcap0 device which will point either /dev/video0 or /dev/video1

The udev rule system is also used the support all the variations on the RTL-SDR devices,
Take a look at /etc/udev/rules.d/rtl-sdr.rules to see how it's done.

Maybe we can do the same thing to support all the EzCAP devices?

I found the information to configure my EzCAP rule like this:

# dmesg | grep usb

[ 1562.232450] usb 1-1.2: New USB device found, idVendor=1b71, idProduct=3002
[ 1562.232472] usb 1-1.2: New USB device strings: Mfr=3, Product=4, SerialNumber=2
[ 1562.232490] usb 1-1.2: Product: usbtv007
[ 1562.232505] usb 1-1.2: Manufacturer: fushicai
[ 1562.232521] usb 1-1.2: SerialNumber: 300000000002
[ 1562.243752] usbtv 1-1.2:1.0: Fushicai USBTV007 Audio-Video Grabber

And here is what it looks like, queried on my system, using v4l2-ctl
# v4l2-ctl -d 1 --all

Driver Info (not using libv4l2):
Driver name : usbtv
Card type : usbtv
Bus info : usb-3f980000.usb-1.2
Driver version: 4.4.26
Capabilities : 0x85200001
Video Capture
Read/Write
Streaming
Extended Pix Format
Device Capabilities
Device Caps : 0x05200001
Video Capture
Read/Write
Streaming
Extended Pix Format
Priority: 2
Video input : 0 (Composite: ok)
Video Standard = 0x0000f900
PAL-M/60
NTSC-M/M-JP/443/M-KR
Format Video Capture:
Width/Height : 720/480
Pixel Format : 'YUYV'
Field : Interlaced
Bytes per Line: 1440
Size Image : 691200
Colorspace : Broadcast NTSC/PAL (SMPTE170M/ITU601)
Flags :
Streaming Parameters Video Capture:
Frames per second: 29.970 (30000/1001)
Read buffers : 2


Posting the output from these commands, from your systems, will help help Evariste build a set of rules
to make the EzCAP device names consistent across all rpidatv systems.

# dmesg | grep usb
# `v4l2-ctl -d 0 --all`
or
# `v4l2-ctl -d 1 --all`
Try device 0 and 1 if you are not sure which device is the EzCAP?

73
Dave - G0EID

[F5SWB Dimitri]

Hi everybody,

I tried with this usb key capture : https://www.pearl.fr/article/PX8048/con ... b-vhs-2-pc
and here is the result :

[ 3985.466050] usb 1-1.4: new high-speed USB device number 9 using dwc_otg
[ 3985.566985] usb 1-1.4: New USB device found, idVendor=1c88, idProduct=0007
[ 3985.567004] usb 1-1.4: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
[ 3985.567017] usb 1-1.4: Product: SM-USB 007
[ 3985.567030] usb 1-1.4: Manufacturer: Somagic, Inc.
[ 3985.567042] usb 1-1.4: SerialNumber: SMBL007

lsusb give me :

Bus 001 Device 009: ID 1c88:0007 Somagic, Inc. SMI Grabber (EasyCAP DC60+ clone) (no firmware) [SMI-2021CBE]

It may be possible to run it but it seems a little bit noisy :

https://code.google.com/archive/p/easyc ... arted.wiki

So I decided to turn to this way :

http://www.cdiscount.com/informatique/a ... #mpos=1|mp

Waiting for it and will see what will be the chip inside ...
To be continued.

73's F5SWB/Dimitri.

[G8GKQ]

Dimitri

Did you try connecting your Somagic USB EasyCap to the Portsdown transmitter? If it is going to work, you should not need to load any drivers.

Please just plug it in, and let me know if it works.

Thanks
Dave, G8GKQ

[G0MXW]

Dave EID,

As we only using driver in MPEG-2 input mode it's probably simpler just to pass video_nr param to modprobe (modprobe bcm2835-v4l2 video_nr=1) to force picam to dev/video1 and change the 2x ffmpeg lines to/dev/video1 and append -d1 after v4l2-ctl. Saves all the messing with all the device id's for various capture devices and doesnt matter whether analogue capturecard is connected or not or in which order.

Dave
g0mxw

[F5SWB Dimitri]

Hello Dave,

Many thanks for your quick reply. In fact, I'm using the Evariste distribution
So I will try this evening to run your version and I will tell you how is the result.

I've ordered a real EASYCAP and I will receive it this week.
Stay in contact with this subject because a lot of people in my place are very interesting to get the opportunity to have an analogic input.

73's qro.
Dimitri.

[G8GKQ]

Dave G0MXW:

Have you tried your suggestion above? It looked like a very neat solution, but I've been trying unsuccessfully to make it work for an hour now....

Any help appreciated!

Dave, G8GKQ

[G0MXW]

Dave, I've tried all combinations of sources and outputs and it seems to work ok. Just about to re-image an sd card from scratch to test.
Couple of caveats:-
if audio card detected or ezcap with audio fails for picam mpeg2 as audio recording format is wrong. Easy fix.
picam mpeg2 to BATC streamer will not work as mpeg2 video is not compat with rtmp stream...transcode to flv (flash) video would work.

Tested digilite, digithin,datv-express...Portsdown still a box of bits
Modified a.sh at https://www.dropbox.com/sh/aitqkw0osx0q ... zfIUa?dl=0

Dave
g0mxw

[F5SWB Dimitri]

hi guys,
with my easycap ,

296.174027] bcm2835-v4l2: V4L2 device registered as video0 - stills mode > 12 80x720
[ 296.178597] bcm2835-v4l2: Broadcom 2835 MMAL video capture ver 0.0.2 loaded.
[ 508.661767] bcm2835-v4l2: unregistering video0
[ 612.018236] media: Linux media interface: v0.10
[ 612.026140] Linux video capture interface: v2.00
[ 612.040052] bcm2835-v4l2: scene mode selected 0, was 0
[ 612.040568] bcm2835-v4l2: V4L2 device registered as video0 - stills mode > 12

But nothing is working ....

[G0MXW]

Dimitri, thats the driver for the picam. Looks like easycap not detected. Unplug your easycap and replug in. What does lsusb give you ?

Dave
g0mxw