Does not work on modern systems

[atolstoy]

Hello,
I have an old Nokia N8 and recently I tried to use it as a webcam on Linux. Your application compiles and runs just fine, but I'm still not able to get the webcam working.
So far I tested epoccam_linux on openSUSE Leap 15 and Ubuntu 18.04. I have compiled the v4l2loopback kernel module, inserted it to the kernel and and then checked that I now have the dummy /dev/video1 device (v4l2-ctl --list-devices). After that I run epoccam. The tray icon appeared, but with the only context menu item (Quit). Then I connectted my phone to the Linux machine in the Ovi mode and launched Epoccam on the phone. It detected the Ovi connection, but did not found the 'driver' on the PC side. The Linux part of Epoccam wrapper seems to not react to the Symbian client pings in any way.

Please advise: am I missing something or maybe the epoccam_linux wrapper stopped working on modern Linux systems at some point?
Thank you in advance.

[ohwgiles]

Hi, unfortunately I'm not familiar with this device or "Ovi mode". Does it mean the PC and phone are on the same network? In the console you should see some output like this:

$ ./epoccam 
Could not find snd_aloop in lsmod, continuing anyway
Received 6 video sizes
Offered video size: 640x480 H264 at 30.000000fps
Offered video size: 1280x720 H264 at 30.000000fps
Offered video size: 1920x1080 H264 at 30.000000fps
Offered video size: 640x480 H264 at 60.000000fps
Offered video size: 1280x720 H264 at 60.000000fps
Offered video size: 1280x720 H264 at 120.000000fps
Selection option 0
Received 1 audio options
Offered audio type: 2
Use the tray icon to start streaming

I haven't used this in years so it is quite possible that something has broken. But at least right now I can reproduce the above with an iPhone on wifi.

[atolstoy]

I try to run epoccam in order to turn my Symbian-based Nokia N8 into a webcam. It has several connection modes for USB, such as mass storage, MTP/PTP and Ovi Suite. The last one is what is actually needed for epoccam. The problem is that the Symbian app Epoccam does not detect my PC as having Kinoni drivers. I hoped that your wrapper would emulate it, but apparently it did not. I don' get anything past these lines:

$ ./epoccam 
Could not find snd_aloop in lsmod, continuing anyway

[ohwgiles]

I assume Ovi mode emulates a network device on the host PC. Does Linux recognise a new card when you enable this mode? Can you ping the device? How does it get an IP address, do you run a dhcp server on this interface?

[atolstoy]

Actually, I've seen some progress with it lately. Epoccam starts fine and when I try to connect to it using Epoccam 1.05 Pro via Wi-Fi, the connection gets established and I see the list of video modes for MPEG and AAC. However, when I select a mode in the tray menu, the Epoccam client on Symbian waits for a second or two and the crashes. On the Linux side, I see the 'rec1v' message about the connection being terminated.
I launched epoccam from root since it does not run from normal user. Your application wants to modprobe the v4l2loopback modules, which requires root privileges. Also, I tried running epoccam from older Linux systems. I have one with kernel 3.0.69 and gcc 4.6. I had to add #include <dirent.h> to the source code to get it compiled correctly, but in the end epoccam behaved exactly like before.
I don't know if the error persists in your code, in v4l2loopback code, or inside the old Epoccam Pro app for Symbian (from 2012). I'll be glad if you have any helpful clues on that!

Cheers.

[ohwgiles]

I haven't used Epoccam for a long time and don't have much bandwidth to help unfortunately.