USB WebCam driver with iRez Kritter

[Steve Sisak (Support)]

OK, this is getting a bit out of hand -- I've been meaning to get an 
update out to the list, but there have been enough problems in the 
past that I have been waiting until we had a solid release before 
taking people's time.

Unfortunately, Mr. Vellman is forcing the issue...

To put things in perspective for the other members of the list, our 
first contact with Dan was two days ago and his position is "If it 
can't be made to work SOON, I want my money back.  An upgrade next 
month that fixes the problem is worth nothing to me".

Well, we do have an upgrade in the works which should fix the 
problem, but since  the timing won't meet his timing criteria, I've 
given him a refund.

My apologies for the slow pace on this last update -- a couple things 
have conspired to slow things down.

First, revenue is down to the point where we are down to myself and 
two part-time people and we have lost our part-time tech support 
person to a full time job, meaning tech support is draining time away 
from engineering.

Second, Mac OS X is a rapidly moving target -- code that's been 
stable for years and breaks and then starts working again. Case in 
point: I held the 1.1b31 release (it is on the server) because of a 
crashing bug in the video settings.

At WWDC, I attempted to reproduce the crash in the DTS lab and 
couldn't -- it appears that it occurs in 10.3.3 (may have been 
introduced in 10.3.2 or .1) and is gone in 10.3.4. Here is a response 
I received from Apple DTS yesterday.

>So I've been looking into your VDig crashing on 10.3.3 problem and 
>it looks to me like a bug in QuickTime. Some of the crashes were 
>inside HIToolbox and some were in CoreAudio, so I don't think it's 
>your code :)

Simply put, Apple only tests with their own drivers. Apple wants you 
to buy an iSight.

Third, which is probably in play here, it that I'm extremely unhappy 
with the registration/installation code in our drivers -- I can only 
apologize for this -- it was written by people who are no longer with 
the company and after 6 months of not being able to ship an update 
because of problems with the installer we have completely rewritten 
it.

This should not only address assorted problems with the installer, 
but fix the issues with using two identical cameras (that don't have 
software-readable serial numbers) simultaneously, as well as add a 
bunch of old features that weren't possible with the old code.

We should have a beta out in the next week or so (this little foray 
has cost us a couple days).

The good news is that, while the problem code is utterly 
unmaintainable, after successful registration, it's completely out of 
play.

At 9:27 AM -0400 7/22/04, Dan Velleman wrote:
>>On 21 Jul, 2004, at 13:42, Dan Velleman wrote:
>>>WARNING:  USB WebCam driver appears to have fried my iRez Kritter:

That is not possible. There is nothing the driver can do to damage 
that particular camera.

If you want to verify that, try the factory drivers (which, if you 
check the copyright you will see that I wrote) on Mac OS 9 or a PC.

>>>I have been trying to use an iRez Kritter USB with a G4 powerbook, OS
>>>X 10.3.4.  I downloaded the IOXperts USB WebCam driver and installed
>>>it, and everything seemed to be working fine in demo mode.  So I paid
>>>my $19.95, and IMMEDIATELY the video went black.  I just tried the
>>>camera on another computer that it used to work on, and I get the same
>>>thing--just black.

An interesting "feature" of the chip used in the iRez Kritter (Divio 
NW802) is that there there's no way for camera vendors to program it 
with their own vendor and product ID. There are many incompatible 
cameras based using different CCD/CDS (CCD controller) combinations 
that can't be distinguished in software w/o help from the user.

As a result, the installer has a second stage that customizes the 
driver based on the camera you said it is.

If you enter the wrong information or something goes wrong with the 
customization, you could end up with a broken driver that gives you 
black video.

>>>So I'm assuming that my camera is dead.  I suppose
>>>it could be a coincidence, and the camera died at the instant that I
>>>paid, but it seems unlikely.  What seems more likely to me is that the
>>>registration process caused the driver to do something bad to my
>>>camera.  (Needless to say, I'm pretty annoyed.)

If it's dead, it has nothing to do with the driver. You can verify on 
Mac OS 9 with the factory drivers.

>I won't be reading this discussion group anymore--not much point, 
>since I no longer have a camera.

If you actually want help, you are welcome to stay, if you just want 
to vent, please take it off line.

-Steve
-- 
_________________________________________________________________________
Steve Sisak, CTO                                 steve.sisak at ioxperts.com
IOXperts, Inc.                                            +1 617 876-2572