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rwired

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USB PC Camera Driver - Is there a generic driver?

I have obtaiined some sample USB Webcams from their manufacturer in China. However the manufacturer does not at this time have a driver for the cameras. In fact they are in the process of hiring a driver programmer to create one.

They are unbranded, and show up just as "PC Camera" in XP, which then looks for a driver, and can't find one.

On the Mac, they show up as:

PC Camera:
 Vendor Name:  Z-Star Corp.
 Speed:    Up to 12 Mb/sec
 Product ID:   12315 ($301b)
 Bus Power (mA):   100

I've tried various USB webcam drivers from various vendors, but cant get them to recognize.

Questions:

Is there a generic USB webcam driver I can try?

What are the steps involved in writing my own driver? i.e. what technical information would i need other that that which i can gather from polling the usb or breaking one of the devices appart and seeing what chipset it uses???



Avatar of slink9
slink9

Yu may have some success looking around www.driverguide.com
Avatar of Callandor
I couldn't find drivers for that brand on www.driverguide.com, though the company seems to be listed.  For info on writing your own drivers, you might have better luck in the programming TA.  We are mostly hardware people here and use what is already written.
Hi,
This is a difficult one, to try to start this you will need some basic info and will need to identify the chip on the board in the webcam.
If there is an easily identified name check driverguide for that chips manufacturer, often although the chip is common the manufacturer masks it with his front end.
If the chip is identified you can try several of the identified drivers, it may be easier to try it on a "simpler" operating system like your mac or w98, which will have more choice for unlicensed drivers.
Writing your own - possible, depending on time and inclination, try to find a similar uncoded version - linux sites are good for this type of info - BUT you may need info from the manufacturer (not easy to come by for obvious reasons)  
BoL
Multihull
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HippyWarlock
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ASKER

I opened the camera to look at the board. No FCC ID number on it. Which isn’t surprising since the Chinese manufacturer probably hasn’t got FCC certification yet for this device.

The chip is a ZC0301Plus … so at least I have a starting point for another compatible driver.
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ASKER

HippyWalock has the ponts because the suggestion ultimately led to my finding the right driver... although not via the FCC ID... I did find a workable driver for ZC0301Plus USB PC cameras - the camera works very nicelly now, thanks.
so where did you end up finding your drivers?
Avatar of rwired

ASKER

Not from any central source, from another USB camera manufacturer's website (http://www.szlyd.com/). Once I established their cameras also used the ZC0301Plus chip then it made sense their drivers would work.
Hey my place

http://members.driverguide.com/driver/detail.php?driverid=87811

here is the driver for the Z Star download this one!

should be the right one ( xp certified to)

Cam
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