Creative Live! Cams on Ubuntu 8.04 using ov51x-jpeg

First of all: It should work fine.. so be optimistic But you will need to compile a kernel module (ov51x-jpeg) to get it running. Please have a look at Creative’s list to see if your camera is using this module (it will have have an URL saying something like “Ov51xJpegHackedSource”). This is what you have to do afterwards:

$ sudo apt-get install build-essential module-assistant ov51x-jpeg-source
$ cd /usr/src/
$ sudo tar xvfj ov51x-jpeg-source
$ cd modules/ov51x-jpeg/

Unfortunately the source package for ov51x-jpeg is broken and won’t compile with the current Ubuntu kernel. So you have to download the newest source and unpack it somewhere. Then do the following:

$ sudo cp /path/to/newest/source/*.c /usr/src/modules/ov51x-jpeg/
$ sudo cp /path/to/newest/source/*.h /usr/src/modules/ov51x-jpeg/
$ sudo make
$ sudo module-assistant install ov51x-jpeg

To ensure that things are working please run sudo modprobe ov51x-jpeg, insert your camera and check that it’s listed when running lsusb. This should work pretty painlessly and afterwards you can enjoy new wonderful apps such as Gnome Cheese. Yay!

Resources:

• Creative list of webcam Linux drivers
• OV51x-Jpeg homepage