This article was first written in April 2004 for
the BeezNest technical website (http://glasnost.beeznest.org/articles/117)
This article reports the successful use of a Trust 750 LCD FamilyC@m digital camera under Linux Debian Sarge.
The FC 750 got to work pretty easily. It uses USB Mass Storage and stores its pictures in jpeg format.
To use it, first install hotplug (
apt-get install hotplug). Then start it. I didn't find a way to start it manually (but didn't look for long) so I know rebooting the system did work for me. It's most probably unnecessary though.
Connect the camera to the computer as described in the manual (put it on PC mode and tick "Mass Storage").
You could see, using tty1 (the first terminal screen) that the camera is recognized by the system and that a link to it is autogenerated at /dev/sda1.
Edit your /etc/fstab file (you need root permissions for that) and add this line:
/dev/sda1 /photo vfat user,noauto 0 0
Then (still root) create /photo (
mkdir /photo) and give permission to the user(s) to read, write and execute within this directory (
chmod o+r,w,x /photo).
Leave the root access behind you (exit) and type
mount /photo. Now go into your /photo directory and check out your picture files…
Now you've set that up, and assuming you've got a GNOME environment, you can use the
Disk Mounter applet to make it even easier:
Right-click your task-bar. Click
Add to panel ->
Utility ->
Disk Mounter. Right-click on the newly inserted applet on your task-bar. Click
Preferences. Change the directory to
/photo and choose a nice icon. Try clicking the icon to mount/umount the camera.
Don't forget that in order to umount the camera, you need to avoid having anything accessing the /photo directory (or one of its subdirectories).
I didn't try the webcam feature though. The FamilyC@m was a very basic digital camera though (one of the first ever cheap ones) and I would certainly not recommend it today (although mine might still work, it used to make 1.3Mpixels pictures of very arguable quality, so it is now in a box, somewhere).
