OSX fails to recognize camera green-steady/ orange-steady/ fan-on

Question

 Hi all, I'm powering the camera with the provided split usb and an anker power core 20100 (5V ? 3A Max Per Port). I've tried video recording in Quicktime(only isight) and Photo Booth(same), Hangouts(isight). I'm can't understand how to test with VLC. I had seen a page with a port address somewhere in the jevois pages. That I think is for VLC.

To the point: What is the trick to making it work on OS X? I have seen the OS X startup video and read startup guide.  really i'd be happy if an image popped up and then the software crashed. anything.

Procedure:

plug in camera to baby usb

plug regular usb 1 into battery

plug  regular usb 2 into computer

lights blink then go steady - wait

start whichever software, check system pref look for Jevois

Yosemite 2.8 GHz Intel Core i7

Also I made an image to illustrate Jevois frame rate in comparison to 720 i anticipation.

Answer 1

I am running MacOS, and the JeVois is being recognized just fine. There are three ends on the Y-cable: two USB-A and one Mini USB. For me, the camera is only recognized when the second USB-A (the one with two wires coming out of it) is plugged into the computer, and the other USB-A is plugged in to power.

Comments

camera---computer---battery
camera---battery ---computer

no juice tried qt and pb again
is it possible its getting too much power?
I have a DC 5v 2A I can use instead maybe?
Thanks for the help charlie

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I just received the camera and am unable to get my MacBookPro to recognize it.
I'm using the provided split connector, have flashed the micro-sd card from etcher with the latest image, and edited the videomappings.cfg to show only one choice of resolution, as suggested elsewhere on the jevois site. I get the green light, flash of orange, and then steady orange with green at the same time. The PhotoBooth app does not see the camera. Finder does not see any new attached devices. I don't know what to look at next. Any help would be appreciated.

And: should I expect finder to browse to the micro-sd card in the camera when everything is working properly? In other words: is my inability to see the attached card in the camera an indication that it is not connected properly?

Answer 2

For VLC, you just go to File -> Open Capture Device, but remember that the latency (lag) is very bad with VLC.

Yes, the long end of the USB cable (the one with 2 wires coming out) is the one that has power+data and should be connected to your computer.

We have experienced issues here with Macs under 2 conditions

1) some USB cables do not seem to work. With those, sometimes PhotoBooth detects JeVois and selects it as the camera to use, but then says on the screen that there is no camera connected. This is fixed by using a high-quality cable such as the one we included with the turnkey kits. To see whether this is your problem, maybe try a cable from Best Buy or such.

2) The Mac does not like some combinations of video modes (in videomappings.cfg) and then just refuses to use the JeVois camera although it is detected. This now seems to be dependent on OSX version. On El Capitan, the videomappings.cfg provided in the SD image works fine for us, and selects 640x480 YUYV, but it flips the video horizontally (at least in PhotoBooth), so we have also flipped the video for that mode. We just tried it on an older Snow Leopard Mac and it looks like 640x360 YUYV gets selected (and we did not flip it for that mode, since this is the one that gets used by default on Linux). So far, the included videomappings.txt seems ok, so please try first without editing it. 640x480 should always work. Maybe try it in MJPG output, this mapping:

MJPG 640 480 15 YUYV 640 480 15 JeVois Convert

3) To check if your JeVois is alive and well, you can also open a terminal (in Applications/Utilities) and type:

screen /dev/tty.usbmodemXXX 115200

(replace usbmodemXXX by whatever comes up when you type tty.usbmodem[TAB])

Then type 'help', 'info', etc and see whether you get some answer, which would indicate your camera is working well.

As far as seeing disks show up when you connect JeVois, so far we have not implemented this in JeVois, because exporting the JeVois SD card over USB would require that we lock all the files on the SD from the JeVois CPU as long as you are accessing them over the USB link. That is, it would essentially freeze JeVois operation to allow you to access the SD contents. This is to avoid inconsistencies between file operations made over USB vs made locally by the JeVois CPU.

Comments

Starting from #3...

With the camera apparently properly booted up (solid orange and green lights on):

When I type "tty" in terminal I get: /dev/ttys000

When I then type "screen /dev/ttys000 115200" I get a basically blank screen in the terminal box with a grey rectangular cursor that doesn't quite work: nothing I type produces results.

If I type "tty.usbmodem" Bash says the command is not found.

Thanks for the clarification on why the disk isn't visible.

Is there something else I could try?

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When i did this my terminal screen went white. I was able to control my cursor around the screen using arrow keys as well as type freely.

edit. After rereading it's the same as VincentP.

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So, do you get results (i.e. do the  commands that you type do anything?)

And: do you get any video from the camera?

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VincentP,
 The commands do nothing for me in Yosemite.

I updated to OS X Sierra and it works like a song.
 I see baby start up video and the video streams.

In Photo Booth, I have a full video with the Jevois demos at the bottom.
In Quicktime, I see only the Jevois demos.
In VLC, I see only the Jevois demos.

 The fan kicks up a little when the camera is brought online by the software.
I'm running the vanilla turnkey sd card and Jevois camera along with the provided cable.

 Camera <- [baby usb] - [middle usb (to power source or another usb)] - [end usb] -> Computer

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I'm at OSX 10.9.5

OK, a quick search shows that I'm a few levels back (i.e. Mavericks)

I'll try upgrading my OS tomorrow.
Thanks

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OK, I've updated the OS to Sierra 10.12.3

In PhotoBooth the JeVois camera shows up on the list of cameras (the built-in webcam and the JeVois) but cannot be selected: i.e. I can only "check" the built-in camera, the JeVois doesn't get a check mark. (It did not show up previously, so that's some progress.)

The JeVois camera does not show up in the ImageCapture app.

In terminal, the command "tty" returns: /dev/ttys000

I typed "screen /dev/ttys000 115200 and appear to get the same result as before the OS update. i.e. I still don't see the JeVois camera in terminal.

I'm using the supplied cable and card.

Oh, I just realized I'm still using my edited version of videomappings.cfg

I'll replace that with the original version, and see if that helps.

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Reverting to the original videomappings.cfg file got it working after the OS update.

Thanks

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Glad yours is running, did you figure out the terminal interface? The [tab] never worked for me and sent me down a rabbit hole. Anyway, an easy way to find xxx
xxx via Terminal with (include the *)

ls /dev/tty.*

it will have different port names mine had two

/dev/tty.Bluetooth-Incoming-Port  and  /dev/tty.usbmodem1234

now type
screen  /dev/tty.usbmodem1234 115200

when i got this far i get
Cannot open line  "screen  /dev/tty.usbmodem1423" for R/W: Resource Busy


Sorry could not find PTY.
I copy pasted as it was running, before it printed "Sorry.."
sudo killall ModemManager
typed password
No matching processes were found

Not sure what to do next.

The white out is "command echo" turned off. This means your strokes won't show up.
"note" #2 here
http://jevois.org/doc/UserCli.html

"Best is to copy and paste."

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Can't print a screen shot...

2011-MacBook-2:~ Vincent$  /dev/tty.*
-bash: /dev/tty.Bluetooth-Incoming-Port: Permission denied

So, just "tty" gets me: /dev/ttys000 ,which suggests we are getting similar, but not identical, results.

re: PhotoBooth There is a note somewhere about it being fussy, which led me to edit videomappings.cfg in the first place. If any Mac users has a known good videomapings.cfg file, I would like to try it. Thanks.

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sorry guys, my answer was unclear: you should type

screen /dev/tty.usbmodem[TAB]

and as you press the [TAB] key this will expand to something like

screen /dev/tty.usbmodem1234

where 1234 will be replaced by another number that depends on your exact mac, and then just add "115200" to complete the command, final is

screen /dev/tty.usbmodem1234 115200

then press return. The screen will clear up and say nothing. Then blindly type:

info

you will not see what you type. But as you press return some info messages will show, as detailed in the UserCli doc you mention above.

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we have a video about this now: https://youtu.be/dK1-JbyrV3o?t=5m22s

in the video, once screen is started, we first blindly type "info", then "help", then a typo, then "listmappings"

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Yes, that works.

Now, what can I do with it? That, of course, is a different topic.

Thanks

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mostly, this is intended for Arduinos to communicate with JeVois, set some camera parameters, change video mode, etc

but the goal in this thread was to check whether the JeVois camera is alive and well despite issues with Macs getting video out of it. If your Mac cannot get video from JeVois (e.g., PhotoBooth), but you can talk to JeVois using screen as described here, this suggests that your camera is alive and well, and the problem is likely your MacOS version or such, rather than a faulty JeVois hardware.

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Actually, I can get video to PhotoBooth after having installed the latest Mac operating system (and restoring the original videomapping.cfg file).

edit: At this point, I can get the demo to run in the PhotoBooth app, but don't know how to get it to do anything other than run the demo.

I gather that this involves somehow setting the screen resolution, but, if I understand correctly, I can only do this by editing the videomapping.cfg file. Am I missing something obvious?

Most of the command line stuff works in terminal, so the camera is doing what it is supposed to do. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do from here to get the different applications to show up in PhotoBooth.

If there is another Mac based app that makes this easier, please let me know.