Logitech QuickCam Communicate MP Plus on Ubuntu Linux 7.10/8.04

by Forrest Sheng Bao http://fsbao.net

The QuickCam Communicate MP Plus (USB ID number: 046d:09a1) is supported by uvcvideo project. Thus, it could work with Linux without any problem. But Ubuntu 7.10/8.04 doesn't support it out of the box, maybe because they didn't come with the latest version of uvcvideo.

So, a five-minute work is needed to rock the webcam.

1. Download the latest uvcvideo driver by executing

   svn checkout svn://svn.berlios.de/linux-uvc/linux-uvc/trunk

   Then you should see a new folder called trunk under current working directory. Enter that folder.
2. Compile the driver. Please make sure that you have installed the Linux kernel source code before doing so.

   forrest@dolphin:~/trunk$ make
   Building USB Video Class driver...
   make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.22-15-generic'
    CC [M]  /home/forrest/trunk/uvc_driver.o
    LD [M]  /home/forrest/trunk/uvcvideo.o
    Building modules, stage 2.
    MODPOST 1 modules
    LD [M]  /home/forrest/trunk/uvcvideo.ko
   make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.22-15-generic'
   

3. I found the sudo make install doesn't work. So, go to the directory containing old uvcvideo driver and replace the old kernel module (on my computer, it is /lib/modules/2.6.22-15-generic/ubuntu/media/usbvideo/uvcvideo.ko ) by the new uvcvideo.ko under your current working directory. It would be better to backup the old uvcvideo.ko before overwriting. For example, I did:

   sudo mv /lib/modules/2.6.22-15-generic/ubuntu/media/usbvideo/uvcvideo.ko /lib/modules/2.6.22-15-generic/ubuntu/media/usbvideo/uvcvideo-bakcup.ko
   sudo cp uvcvideo.ko /lib/modules/2.6.22-15-generic/ubuntu/media/usbvideo/uvcvideo.ko

4. Remove the old kernel module and load the new one.

   sudo modprobe -r uvcvideo
   sudo modprobe uvcvideo

5. Then you can test it by any webcam capture problem, for example, the cheese or camstream, or Skype. When capturing video, the green indication LED on the webcam will be on. The snd_usb_audio module should support the building microphone of the webcam out-of-the-box.

If you have any problem, don't hesitate to bother me.