[AG-TECH] Multiple Logitech Orbits

[Jon Johansson]

I know lots of people are using Logitech cameras for 
personal nodes. I don't recall seeing anything on the list
about trying to use more than one of these cameras on
a system.

I've connected 2 Logitech Orbits just to see if it would work ... 
I get two video streams and things seem to be working pretty well 
(I added 2 video producer services and once different drivers
are selected the video runs fine).

The only problem is that the little gui doesn't let me rotate and 
zoom both cameras. The video tab of the Camera Settings dialog
has a drop list showing two cameras and indicates that the camera
is being used by vic. Trying to select either of the list entries
doesn't seem to change which camera is being controlled. 
The camera that I can control seems to depend on the order that
vic grabs the drivers - it seems pretty random. An interesting
thing is that the GUI allows me to steer one camera, but enabling
face tracking affects the other camera. I wouldn't suggest this
for production, but with a patient user one camera can be set up
using the face tracking and the other through the GUI.

I contacted Logitech and they had this to say:
"The Windows Operating System itself allows many video capture 
devices to be connected to the system. However, it will only support 
using one capture device at any given moment in time. Consequently, 
you will not be able to use more than one Logitech video camera at 
a time or use a camera in conjunction with another capture device."

This doesn't really seem to describe what is happening, because
I used this setup in a meeting for an hour and half and the video
was totally stable: two streams out at 24 f/s and 800 kb/s.

This might be totally broken in the next QuickCam release
but for two people at a PIG it is actually very comfortable
and I hope that it continues to work.

If it is of interest I'm using QuickCam 8.3 and Win XP SP1.

Jon.

-- 
Jon I Johansson             *  Research Computing Support
jon.johansson at ualberta.ca   *  Computing and Network Services
Tel.: (780) 492-9304        *  University of Alberta
Fax.: (780) 492-1729        *  Edmonton, Alberta, CANADA