USB Webcam Guide

Introduction

Webcams come in many forms, but the USB ones usually come a UVC (USB Video Class) devices. This primer gives a very brief overview of what they are and how to use them.

Advantages

Their advantage is their cross-platform compatibility, especially within the various flavours of Linux.

• Wikpedia gives a good overview of their levels of compatibility
• Many devices other than the Phidget webcam use the same protocol, please refer to a compatibility list

Use

A UVC device should be truly plug and play. Even on the Phidget Single Board Computer, the drivers are already installed. You can almost immediately begin using video capture programs on your operating system to record video or pictures.

Examples include:

• Capture from Windows media players and creators
• Use iMovie on Mac OS X
• Cheese on Linux (sudo apt-get install cheese)

However, these programs are usually graphical programs which don't help if you want to use the webcam in code.

Phidget SBC

Any UVC webcam device should work interchangeably with any other UVC webcam device, So you don't have to use the Phidget one, you can find one that fits your needs.