Philips USB cam on OS.X 10.4

[huub]

Hi,

I'm trying to connect my Philips USB webcam PCVC690K to OS.X 10.4. The driver-installer recognized the cam, but so far iChat says there's no cam attached and another program only says there's a USB mic attached. The latter works well btw. Does anyone have an idea on a solution?

Thanks.

[Giaguara]

iChat by default in 10.4 (and prior) wants to use only Firewire cameras.
To work around this, you can use specidic drivers,

http://webcam-osx.sourceforge.net/
http://www.ioxperts.com/FAQs/faq_webcamx.html
http://www.ecamm.com/mac/ichatusbcam/

[huub]

I have tried several drivers by now. The latest, and most successfull, is macam. The only problem is now, that after an initial single image-grab, nothing happens. I do get 1 error: USB communications problem. I know it's not the cam, because it works well on both Linux and Windows.

[Giaguara]

Do you get a more specific error message there?
Open Console (Applications/Utilities folder) and have it on when you use iChat. When you get that error, console should have some details of the error. Post the lines it gives when this error occurs the next time so can have a look what happens there.

[huub]

No, that's the only error message I get. When I open Console and start macam, I get this in Console with I press the Play button:

StartNextIsochRead-ReadIsochPipeAsync: Error: kIOReturnNoResources - resource shortage

iChat states I do have audio, but a camera is not detected. Hope this helps..

Ok, more info. On starting macam I get this:

2007-11-11 13:38:10.655 macam[237] Can't open input server /Users/huub/Library/InputManagers/SafariStand
Connection Problem: java.net.SocketTimeoutException connect timed out

After copying SafariStand into the folder:

2007-11-11 13:42:48.908 macam[243] Can't open input server /Users/huub/Library/InputManagers/SafariStand
2007-11-11 13:42:48.908 macam[243] Can't open input server /Library/InputManagers/SafariStand-loader.bundle
2007-11-11 13:42:48.909 macam[243] Can't open input server /Library/InputManagers/SafariStand.bundle

[MisterMe]

Originally Posted by huub

Hi,

I'm trying to connect my Philips USB webcam PCVC690K to OS.X 10.4. The driver-installer recognized the cam, but so far iChat says there's no cam attached and another program only says there's a USB mic attached. The latter works well btw. Does anyone have an idea on a solution?

...

macam. This has nothing to do with USB versus FireWire. It has to do with the fact that not all USB webcams are fully-compliant with the USB standard. Those that are fully-compliant like my Logitech webcam work with MacOS X and iChat out-of-the-box with no additional software. Those that aren't like your Philips require a third-party driver. The opensource macam driver explicitly supports your Philips PCVC690K.

[Giaguara]

Hm. Do you have SafariStand installed? For some reason it tries to use its resources but can't...

[huub]

I figured that. The way I put them in there was just copying from /Users/huub/SafariStand2.0b17/SafariStand. Is that the correct way or should I change permissions with chmod?