Automatic Capture from Digicams
- Grab this file (run-cams.tgz). It has
the code and an executable to automate capture from cameras under
linux. If you need to recompile, run "make clean;make" because the
program will fail to link otherwise (something is wrong with the
makefile, which came with the original capture program).
- Setup the cameras (e.g., mute them and turn off custom sounds
under "My Camera"), plug them in via USB, and turn them on in playback
mode.
- Make sure there is a CF card in the camera. This is necessary
even though the card isn't used.
- You need to be root to run the program because you need to
read/write from USB. There's probably a way to give a particular user
this access, but I don't know what it is.
- Run the program! It will scan for cameras, start them all,
configure them with default settings, and then begin capturing images
as quickly as possible. The code will try to stagger the capture time
between the cameras to get the most coverage.
- You can press <ctrl-c> to exit the program. It will try to
gracefully shut down the cameras, but this may take several seconds.
You can always power down the cameras manually or unplug the USB cable
to speed up the process.
- Even when shutdown appears to go smoothly, the camera is often
left in a strange state. Thus, you should power-cycle each camera
between runs.
- If something horrendous happens, unplug the USB cable, power down
the camera, and remove the battery if necessary.
- Execute
run-cams help or run-cams -? for command line options. Currently, the only options are scan, debug, and info:
scan - scan for cameras, dump some information, and exitdebug - turn on verbose debug information (def: off)info=Y/N - turn on or off minimal information output (def: on).
Note that the syntax is slightly different than normal for linux apps in that no '-' prefix is necessary (e.g., run-cams scan or run-cams info=n)