My webcam won't work - how do I debug? [closed]

Question

My HP 6930 laptop has a built in webcam. This used to work just fine when I had Windows installed.

Now that I am on Ubuntu, the webcam does not work.

I installed Cheese, but this is what I get:

How do I go about debugging this?

Answer 1

The camera on that model seams to be a Chicony, running the following should give you one line with the camera model:

lsusb | grep 04f2

You can then look up your model (search for the number after the red text) on this site: http://www.ideasonboard.org/uvc/

Answer 2

"No device found" sounds like no driver is found/loaded for the camera...

1. Some laptops have a switch/key to enable/disable the webcam; make sure it's on. ;-)
2. Does your webcam show up in the output of the lsusb command? If it does, can you provide us with the line that describes the webcam? (If you're not sure which line it is, feel free to add the whole output of lsusb to your original post.)

Answer 3

Do u have /dev/video file? This is how webcams are seen. Also, try launching gstreamer-properties and inspecting the 'video' tab

Answer 4

Install cheese (webcam software) by searching for 'cheese' in Ubuntu Software Centre.

Then run cheese in a terminal (Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal) using this command:

cheese

Have a look at any errors that are printed in the terminal. You can copy these by selecting the text and pressing ctrl-shift-c.

These should give you a clue to what the problem is.

You could use the same process for any other software that you are using that uses the webcam.

Answer 5

There are a number of webcam programs to access your webcam; Cheese is just one.

To test if the default open source drivers are working I access my built-in webcam on my laptop using Video for Linux or Video for Linux 2 and VLC media player.

1. Open VLC media player.
2. Click on the the Media menu, choose either Advanced Open File or Open Capture Device
3. Choose Capture mode

I use Video for Linux 2 [try experimenting with the other modes]. You may need to install Video for Linux in order for the Capture Device to become available.

You can also check if there is a v4l device in the /dev directory.

$ ls /dev/v4l  
by-id by-path  
$ ls /dev/v4l/by-*  
by-id:  
usb-Bison_Electronics_Inc.BisonCam_NB_Pro-video-index0  

by-path:  
pci-0000:00:1a.0-usb-0:1.1:1.0-video-index0  

ls -la /dev/v4l/by-path/pci-0000\:00\:1a.0-usb-0\:1.1\:1.0-video-index0   
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 12 2011-02-18 07:08 /dev/v4l/by-path/pci-0000:00:1a.0-usb-0:1.1:1.0-video-index0 -> ../../video0  

which is a link to /dev/video0

If you can see that It is a USB device but when I do

$ lsusb I get  
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 8087:0020  
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub  
Bus 001 Device 004: ID 147e:1001 Upek   
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 5986:0343 Acer, Inc   
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 8087:0020    
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub   

It looks like it does not show up. But it works for me.

Answer 6

check the connections. Even if its an inbuilt one; for these you unscrew the front panel of the screen to get to the LCD itself (don't worry, it wont fall out, and the webcam plugged into USB on top of it (it will not look like a USB port, it looks just like an internal connector, but the technology is USB)

Answer 7

I know this question is old, but I am desperate...

Raj More, have you fixed this issue? I am experiencing the same problem with the same webcam (04f2:b221) and nobody seems to be helping me one the sites I posted the question :(

Please, help!