Ricoh RY5U870-VW001 camera

[Albert Vilella]

Ricoh is using the "Ricoh Original Driver".

Sony Visual Communication Camera VGP-VCC2

The manufacturer is Ricoh: Vendor ID: 0x05ca Product ID: 0x1830

The microphone by the camera works (small hole at the left of the lenses), so you can use it normally, but the camera is going to be more difficult to get to work.

The device is one of these products:

http://www.ricoh.com/LSI/product_pcif/usb/5u870_v001/

http://www.ricoh.com/LSI/product_pcif/usb/5u870_v002/

[Albert Vilella (avilella)]

This file provides all sorts of info about what exactly the hardware is.

[stelian (stelian)]

Sonypi does not do any webcam recognision at all. The 'camera' parameter is supposed to be set *by the user* if he wants sonypi to do some magical voodoo in order to turn on the motion eye camera.

Also, do read Documentation/video4linux/meye.txt in the kernel source. You'll find out that the meye driver works only with a specific generation of motion eye cameras (the PCI ones you'll find on C1VM/N/E Sony Vaio Picturebooks).

All the other motion eye cameras are unsupported and will require a full driver to be written for (unless they are based on some common chipset which is supported by a "standard" webcam driver - pwc for example).

[Ben Collins (ben-collins)]

Please confirm whether or not the suggestion worked for you.

[Albert Vilella (avilella)]

I haven't found any information regarding any standards about the video camera, apart from it being based on the M25U870 chip by MicroVision:
http://www.mvision.co.jp/shohin_M25U870.htm

So from Stelian comments I understand that there is no way right now to make this work, and there doesn't seem to be a clear route to make it work.

[stelian (stelian)]

No, there is no way to make it work right now.

The clear route to make it work is to ask MicroVision for programming documentation. They may be willing to disclose those (maybe under NDA - in this case be careful that the NDA does allow writing GPL code). They you can write the driver yourself - or find a kernel developer willing to do it for you.

[Albert Vilella (avilella)]

So Sony has nothing to do with this? Contacting MicroVision would be enough?

I am certainly not able to write the driver by myself. I don't know what kind of money would it take to have someone do this. By the way, Stelian: you seem like the man for the job here.

[stelian (stelian)]

Sony woudn't agree on releasing any documentation anyway. Believe me, I've tried very hard.

The manufacturer is most of the time more friendly. If their agreement with Sony doesn't prohibit them from distributing the docs, they can probably be persuaded to release them.

There are many kernel developers that will love to write such a driver, for zero money. The only problem is that it's quite difficult to write it without having access to the hardware. So you'll have to either find out a kernel developer already having this laptop or wanting to buy one or maybe you (with others) can buy such a laptop to a kernel developer who will write the driver in exchange.

I for one I'm very happy with my Apple laptop for now.

[Albert Vilella (avilella)]

One last bit of information:
The manufacturer is Ricoh, and the product id details are:
vendor id: 0x05ca product id: 0x1830
http://www.qbik.ch/usb/devices/showdev.php?id=3737

[stelian (stelian)]

Le 7 mai 06 à 13:12, Albert Vilella a écrit :

> One last bit of information:
> The manufacturer is Ricoh, and the product id details are:
> vendor id: 0x05ca product id: 0x1830
> http://www.qbik.ch/usb/devices/showdev.php?id=3737

Hmm, somebody should really contact Ricoh and see if they would be
willing to disclose the needed information for developing the Linux
driver...

Stelian.

[Albert Vilella (avilella)]

Laurent Pinchard, of uvclinux fame, helped on investigate this device (see http://avilella.googlepages.com/camera_notes). It seems this is not a UVC compliant "U" device, but a "W" instead. Hence, Ricoh is using the "Ricoh Original Driver", which means that we should contact Ricoh about the Linux support.

We could probably close this bug or rename it as "Ask Ricoh to disclose information regarding this device's drivers".

[Albert Vilella (avilella)]

We want to extend the list of owners of the SZ series laptop interested in having the Ricoh webcam workingv under Linux. We are about to send a request letter to Ricoh. Please send an email to avilella(gmail) and you will receive a draft of the letter to confirm signatories.

[Albert Vilella (avilella)]

The drivers are now available here:

http://lsb.blogdns.net/ry5u870/

Should be merged with the kernel/v4l at some point. Close bug?

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for linux-source-2.6.15 (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

[SqUe (sque)]

Driver is working great, I am using it on a HP Pavillion dv6187ea. I am using it at 7.04 and 7.10 32bit ubuntu, I would love to see it supported by default with ubuntu.

[Albert Vilella (avilella)]

I agree. I would be great if this gets incorporated into Ubuntu or upstream:

http://www.linuxdriverproject.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/OutOfTreeDrivers#Web_Cams