Turning Off My Webcam

carney1979 · #1 25th July 2006, 05:27 AM

I'm running FC5 (AMD 64 machine but using the i386 version) with a USB webcam, a Logitech QuickCam IM.

To get the camera to work, I'm using the spca5xx module. It seems to work fine with CamStream and Gnome-Meeting (aka Ekiga).

My problem is I load the module from the /etc/rc.d/rc.local script via modprobe. So when my system starts up, the camera becomes active and the green LED comes on when the module loads.

Now I know someone would have to be a really good hacker to get through my stealth firewall and actually see anything with my camera, but it still kinda freaks my wife out that it's active.

The funny part is when I boot CamStream or Ekiga, the LED flickers a bit as the program boots. When I'm done with either program, the program(s) seem to shut down the camera, or at least the green LED.

A quick /sbin/lsmod shows the spca5xx is still loaded, even though the camera (or LED) is shut down.

So, is there a way to shut down the camera or LED from the command line?

David

dtpucci · #2 19th July 2007, 10:26 PM

I had upgraded to kernel 2.6.22.1-20.fc7 #1 SMP and notice this same problem of which no one has responded.
How do we turn off webcam from cli?

dtpucci · #3 20th July 2007, 07:07 PM

Holy mackeral! (pardon the retro phrasing) but I must be in deep ca-ca with 176 views and no response. I just wanted to add that it's strange to me that Camstream doesn't show any camera listed Microsoft vx3000. I had it working half-way before. Now I would be satisfied just to be able to cli it to shut it off short of pulling the usb plug.
Don't want to do that because I use it on other distros. WinXP is the only one that I've got it working right. I know,
it's a MS camera, however it is made by logitech which works pretty well in linux, I understand. Any help would be
appreciated. My eyes hurt from reading too much.

Iron_Mike · #4 20th July 2007, 09:56 PM

Probably not the fix your looking for, but you could alway stick a piece a black electrical tape over the lense.....

dtpucci · #5 21st July 2007, 08:16 AM

Ha ha ha ha ha However, it would be a chore to clean tape off lens. I am using a handy-wipe instead.

dtpucci · #6 23rd July 2007, 02:27 AM

I was able to "turn off" the webcam by going here:
http://atrpms.net/dist/f7/gspca/ and downloading and installing the proper
file for the kernel. Naturally the key is getting the right file when you change
kernel. I'm guessing since I had it working before and changed kernel it was
stuck ON by wrong driver/config. Hope this helps someone else, also.

dtp