Wanted: Low-light web cam witih great Linux support

[Tom_ZeCat]

An update: All of a sudden the C510 is working. I didn't think I did anything. This morning I went into System Settings ==> Multimedia ==> Audio and Video Settings ==> Video Recording/Communication and saw that only /dev/video0 was listed. The Lenovo web cam is no longer listed. That's good, but I did not uninstall it myself. Then I went to testwebcam.com to discover that the C510 is working! The only thing different that I can think of is I allowed some updates to install. I didn't think any of them were web cam related, but perhaps they were.

[Tom_ZeCat]

Help, I'm having problems again. After applying Kubuntu's latest updates now all of a sudden I can't get the Logitech C510 to work. I got into System Settings ==> Multimedia ==> Audio and Video Settings ==> Video Recording/Communication and now I again see both web cams listed. Here's what I'm seeing:


screen capture tool

I can tell from the tooltips that /dev/video0 is the Logitech and /dev/video1 is the Lenovo EasyCam. I can use the Prefer and Defer buttons at the bottom to change the order that the cams are displayed in. I've changed it several times and hit Apply. However, no matter what I do, only the junky Lenovo webcam works. Previously when somehow only the Logitech was listed, it ran.

I don't understand why the Logitech webcam isn't being used when I move it up to the top of the list. Is there some way I can just uninstall the Lenovo web cam? I looked in the Synaptic Package Manager for it, but could not find it. I want it gone since I don't intend to ever use it. It's a poor quality webcam. The Logitech is way better. I've been testing the cam by going to testwebcam.com. I reload the page any time I've changed some settings.

I would go out and buy a well-supported webcam if I thought it would help, but I suspect the Lenovo one would just override it.

How do I uninstall this junky Lenovo web cam? I don't want to use it ever again. For my conference today I ended up having to boot to Windows to be able to use the Logitech.

[SteveRiley]

I have seen this happen on Lenovos. On my T520 and X1, I can disable the built-in webcam in the firmware settings. Perhaps you can try this on yours.

[Tom_ZeCat]

I have seen this happen on Lenovos. On my T520 and X1, I can disable the built-in webcam in the firmware settings. Perhaps you can try this on yours.

Great idea, but unfortunately it did not work. I hit F2 to go into the BIOS on bootup and looked through all the menus. There was nothing there that could disable the web cam.

I've tried blacklisting the Lenovo web cam, so far with no luck, but maybe there's something I'm overlooking. I found these two links on blacklisting a web cam's driver:
http://askubuntu.com/questions/16680...able-my-webcam
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1211371
Unfortunately, though I feel I may be on the right track, nothing has worked.

With the info in the links, and with the Logitech web cam unplugged, I used lsusb to get these results:
lsusb results 2-4-2014:

Bus 002 Device 003: ID 0bda:0479 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. RTS5139 Card Reader Controller
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 8087:0016 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0008 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 6974:0373 Acer, Inc
Bus 001 Device 004: ID 075e:091f Microsoft Corp. Mouse/Keyboard 2.4GHz Transceiver V2.0
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 8087:0017 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0007 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

I was able to figure out that the Acer one is the Lenovo web cam. I used this command:

dmesg | grep 6974:0373

That resulted in:

[ 24.983418] uvcvideo: Found UVC 1.00 device Lenovo EasyCamera (6974:0373)

Then I edited my blacklist:

gksu gedit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

The first one I tried blocked both the Lenovo web cam and the Logitech one:

blacklist uvcvideo

And the following ones I tried one by one. None of them blocked either web cam:

blacklist UVC
blacklist 6974:0373
blacklist 29.340695
blacklist Bus 001 Device 003
blacklist ID 6974:0373
blacklist Bus 001 Device 003: ID 6974:0373 Acer, Inc
blacklist UVC 1.00 device Lenovo EasyCamera (6974:0373)
blacklist Lenovo EasyCamera
blacklist /dev/video1

It's extremely frustrating. I'm ready to throw this laptop off a bridge. What drives me crazy is it was working before. Somehow the Lenovo cam was not showing up, only the Logitech one, and it worked great. There must be some way to do one of these three things:

1. Uninstall the Lenovo web cam
2. Block the Lenovo web cam via the blacklist
3. Let me ####ing choose which web cam I want to use.

I don't understand why Kubuntu's interface doesn't let me choose a cam. I've elevated the Logitech to the top of the list. I've demoted it to the bottom. Nothing works. I can't right click on the driver and remove it. Maybe there's a 3rd-party utility that either lets me pick a cam or uninstall one? Maybe it can be uninstalled from the command line?

So very, very frustrating.

(I've fictionalized some of the numbers for security reasons. The real ones are much like above.)

[Tom_ZeCat]

Figured it out!

It's so simple you'll laugh. On this laptop Fn+Esc disables the web cam. I hit that and then voilà! The Lenovo's crappy web cam was no longer listed and the Logitech one was working instead.

After all that googling and screwing around with the blacklist, the BIOS, etc., it turned out to be this simple. Sheesh. Well, at least I learned how to blacklist something. That could come in handy.

[SteveRiley]

Well, if it's any consolation, we've all had moments like these. I'm glad you finally found a solution.

[richb]

Occam's Razor.

[Tom_ZeCat]

I'm so used to desktops that I forget those functions with the Fn keys exist.