Debian Ubuntu – Webcam in Yahoo! Chatrooms
Recently my internet service provider gifted me a webcam. It is a Creative Vista Webcam and came with an installation disk for Windows. I wanted to see how it works on my Ubuntu Linux. When I plugged it in Ubuntu didn’t recognize it. I had to download drivers for it. Ubuntu’s community documentation’s Webcam page helped a lot. The EasyCam utility recognized my webcam but didn’t offer a driver for it. So I tried manual driver installation.
Rastageeks provides a hacked driver for webcams. My webcam was listed on the Working Webcams webpage. The installation instructions were simple, and since I was familiar with adding third party repositories I had no trouble installing the debian packages. Running the module assistant installed the driver on my computer and now I was able to see it working in Ekiga.
But I don’t use Ekiga, I use Yahoo! Messenger, so it has to work with Yahoo. We have Pidgin (Gaim) installed by default in Ubuntu. But it does not support Yahoo webcams. I have seen webcams working on Gyachi but I didn’t like its cluttered interface. So I decided to try Kopete. KDE Wiki has a very helpful Kopete Webcam Support page. From there I found out that I need to download libjasper-runtime package to see my webcam working. Jasper Runtime package is called libjasper-runtime and is available from Ubuntu Archives so it was much easier to download and install it. After that I ran Kopete and by clicking on Settings > Configure > Devices I was able to see my webcam working. Fantastic!
I was pleased with the picture quality. It was much better than Windows, and what I saw on Yahoo! messenger installed on my Windows PC. But unfortunately Kopete does not support Yahoo Public Chatrooms. So I had to try Gyachi again. While trying to Install Gyachi, I came across more dependency issues. But these were no big issues, I simply had to install two packages libgpgme11 and libmcrypt4. Finally getting Gyachi installed, this is what I got:
I browsed the forums to find out a solution, I read about adjusting brightness, contrast and colors. I did that too, but nothing worked. I am still unable to use the web cam in Yahoo chat rooms.
November 13th, 2007 at 2:31 pm
usually, i find that being less stubborn allows me fantastic results to annoying problems such as the one you describe. i hate yahoo ! chatrooms and so i use amsn. if i really need to use a webcam, and most of the time i don’t, i’m content to use msn chat with windows xp. that way, i can save money buy not buying aspirin for those tension headaches, and buy a lot more pizza, etc. etc.
November 15th, 2007 at 3:18 am
Buddy, what did you expect from a Windows-born webcam? You should buy a real stuff, like one of this http://www.webcam-list.com/blog/2007/11/links-to-mac-webcams.html
February 4th, 2008 at 6:02 am
there has been a recent release of gyachi that may help your problem it may be worth try
July 1st, 2008 at 1:10 pm
im trying to get into yahoo chat rooms through gaim messenger. it will let me get room list but it wont let me click link for typein in passcode