Motion doesn't work if first to access web-cam.

Question

I love this program but have one minor problem. After boot up, Motion never works if it is the first program to access the web-cam. This is on an 8 year old pc...this problem never happened when I was using my laptop.

I'll usually first access the web-cam with the program camstream. After that I can run motion and it works flawlessly. Sometimes I'll start motion first and then I'll have to quit motion (via the web interface using wget) and if I start it again it will work.

By motion "not working" I mean...motion is not detected (no motion pictures saved, however the interval snapshots return black pictures with the text on them) and when viewing through localhost:8081...it is just a black picture with the text.

(Same thing happens with my Nokia N810... except it's every other or so picture is black -- JonathanMiner - 21 Jan 2009)

I've ran it in debug mode but it doesn't tell me anything. It just seems to try to detect motion on a black picture...

Any ideas for a script to run on startup to overcome this? Or, any ideas on why this occurs?

Thanks

web-cam: Logitech QuickCam Messenger (046d:08da)
driver: gspca? 
from dmesg...
[   41.736000] usbcore: registered new interface driver gspca
[   41.736000] ubuntu/media/gspcav1/gspca_core.c: gspca driver 01.00.12 registered

Environment

Motion version:	3.2.8.ubuntu.fiesty_i386
ffmpeg version:	svn
Libraries:	ffmpeg
Server OS:	xubuntu 7.04

-- JoeBeam - 31 Oct 2007

Follow Up

2008.06.30 update

Server is now running xubuntu 7.10 Gutsy (kernel 2.6.22-15-generic). I upgraded motion with motion_3.2.10.1-0.ubuntu.gutsy_i386.deb and upgraded gspca to 01.00.20. The problem still exists.

Just offhand, do other webcam viewers (like camstream) allow you to open the video device in one command? Otherwise, I think I'll try to duplicate whatever motion does when it opens and closes the video stream.

Thanks for your help.

---

Hi Joe,

I don't really know why motion is not able to "init" your webcam , i hear that with some bttv modules but never with a webcam module ...

you should try to load your module with some debug parameter and run motion in debug mode and no daemon : ./motion -n -d 10

-- AngelCarpintero - 03 Jul 2008

Answer

I've loaded gspca with debug parameters, but it really logs a lot of stuff and I couldn't find any errors. When I run motion in non daemon I get this...

[0] Processing thread 0 - config file /etc/motion/motion.conf
[0] Motion 3.2.10.1 Started
[0] ffmpeg LIBAVCODEC_BUILD 3352064 LIBAVFORMAT_BUILD 3344896
[0] Thread 1 is from /etc/motion/motion.conf
[1] Thread 1 started
[0] motion-httpd/3.2.10.1 running, accepting connections
[0] motion-httpd: waiting for data on port TCP 8080
[1] Not a V4L2 device?
[1] Using VIDEO_PALETTE_YUV420P palette
[1] Using V4L1
[1] Resizing pre_capture buffer to 1 items
[1] Started stream webcam server in port 8081
[0] httpd - Finishing
[0] httpd Closing
[0] httpd thread exit
[1] Thread exiting
[1] Calling vid_close() from motion_cleanup
[1] Closing video device /dev/video0
[0] Motion terminating

Through this process I figured out I can recreate the init problem by removing and adding the gspca module via "sudo modprobe -r gspca" and "sudo modprobe gspca".

I ended up making this simple program to open and close the video stream...

#include <unistd.h>
#include <fcntl.h>

int main(){

int fd = -1;
fd = open("/dev/video0", O_RDWR);

if(fd >= 0){ close(fd); }

return(0);
}

if I run this program before running motion for the first time, everything works. So, I made an alias motion-start='oc-webcam && motion'

all is well now!

(Same solution works for me too! -- JonathanMiner - 21 Jan 2009)

---

really weird , because motion does exactly the same :

 fd = open(dev->video_device, O_RDWR);

So i think there's a bug on your driver or permission issues.

-- AngelCarpintero - 26 Sep 2008