November 21, 2019

USB Earwax Camera

This began (as many things do) with a Hackaday article: This led to the purchase of: My cost was $5.20 and it took only 10 days to ship from China. 
With electronic micro-camera, you can achieve real-time observation of the whole process of dig earwax through the USB data cable.
Ultra small lens with HD pixels, easy access ear canal and see more clearly.
6pcs LED lamp is super bright for using in darkness and safe to use.
Suitable for daily cleaning care, ear disease patients can also observe the ear canal.
5.5mm lens can easily access to almost all ear canal, an essential tool for each family.
Made by U-Kiss.
The offering claims both 720P and 0.3 megapixels. The model discussed in the Hackaday article giave 640x480, but looks somewhat different than mine.

I opened the package and plugged the thing into my linux system. The system log shows: 

Nov 21 20:11:29 trona kernel: usb 2-1.8: new high-speed USB device number 3 using ehci-pci
Nov 21 20:11:29 trona kernel: usb 2-1.8: New USB device found, idVendor=1908, idProduct=2311, bcdDevice= 1.00
Nov 21 20:11:29 trona kernel: usb 2-1.8: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=0
Nov 21 20:11:29 trona kernel: usb 2-1.8: Product: USB2.0 PC CAMERA
Nov 21 20:11:29 trona kernel: usb 2-1.8: Manufacturer: Generic
Nov 21 20:11:29 trona kernel: videodev: Linux video capture interface: v2.00
Nov 21 20:11:29 trona kernel: uvcvideo: Found UVC 1.00 device USB2.0 PC CAMERA (1908:2311)
Nov 21 20:11:29 trona kernel: uvcvideo 2-1.8:1.0: Entity type for entity Processing 2 was not initialized!
Nov 21 20:11:29 trona kernel: uvcvideo 2-1.8:1.0: Entity type for entity Camera 1 was not initialized!
Nov 21 20:11:29 trona kernel: input: USB2.0 PC CAMERA: USB2.0 PC CAM as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.0/usb2/2-1/2-1.8/2-1.8:1.0/input/input11
Nov 21 20:11:29 trona kernel: usbcore: registered new interface driver uvcvideo
Nov 21 20:11:29 trona kernel: USB Video Class driver (1.1.1)
I also see: 
ls -l /dev/video*
crw-rw----+ 1 root video 81, 0 Nov 21 20:11 /dev/video0
crw-rw----+ 1 root video 81, 1 Nov 21 20:11 /dev/video1
UVC stands for "USB Video Class" So I did the following: 
su
dnf install v4l-utils
v4l2-ctl --list-devices
USB2.0 PC CAMERA: USB2.0 PC CAM (usb-0000:00:1d.0-1.8):
	/dev/video0
	/dev/video1

v4l2-ctl -d /dev/video0 --list-ctrls
                     brightness 0x00980900 (int)    : min=0 max=255 step=1 default=128 value=128
                       contrast 0x00980901 (int)    : min=0 max=255 step=1 default=148 value=148
                     saturation 0x00980902 (int)    : min=0 max=255 step=1 default=90 value=90
                            hue 0x00980903 (int)    : min=-127 max=127 step=1 default=0 value=0
                          gamma 0x00980910 (int)    : min=1 max=8 step=1 default=4 value=4
           power_line_frequency 0x00980918 (menu)   : min=0 max=2 default=1 value=2
                      sharpness 0x0098091b (int)    : min=0 max=15 step=1 default=3 value=3
         backlight_compensation 0x0098091c (int)    : min=1 max=5 step=1 default=1 value=1
So this is exciting. There really is a device out there that is responding in some way.

Following suggestions in the ArchLinux webcam wiki, I do this: 

su
dnf install xawtv
xawtv -c /dev/video0
And this works great! I am looking at video in real time on my screen now. I can type "J" and capture a jpeg image. Typing "F" takes me in and out of full screen mode.

I get 640 by 480 images, so the claim of 720P in the listing is a blatant lie, as 720P should be 1280 by 720 pixels. Not that I ever expected this to be true.

Have any comments? Questions? Drop me a line!

Tom's Electronics pages / tom@mmto.org