Difference between revisions of "TelePresence"

Revision as of 14:53, 11 June 2010

Running TelePresence

The Cisco TelePresence program requires a working firewire camera connection. The opensource program Coriander can read in the firewire image stream and output it to a video device through Video4Linux. Coriander must be capturing camera data and outputting it to a video device before TelePresence can be loaded with live camera support. If TelePresence is started and the camera is not set up completely correctly, a test color pattern will display where the live video image should be.

If you are not working on a machine that has already been set up for firewire, refer to the Firewire on CentOS guide.

Load coriander by typing "coriander" into a terminal window. Click on the "Services" tab. Set the input resolution to 320x240. Start ISO Transmition at 400, then start the Receive service, then start the Display service. Once the image from the camera displays, start the V4L service.

You might run into a series of issues getting these steps to work. Here's how to troubleshoot the most common ones:

Coriander will not start up and says that there are no cameras connected:

• Make sure the camera is plugged in and the amber light on the front is on.
• Make sure that /dev/raw1894, /dev/video1394, and /dev/video1394/0 are owner by the current user.

The Receive service gives an error:

• Make sure that /dev/raw1894, /dev/video1394, and /dev/video1394/0 are owner by the current user.

ISO Transmission will not start:

• Keep clicking until it works

The video is green or intermittently flashes green:

• This is a known issue with the firewire driver
• Stop and restart transmission until the issue goes away.
• Sometimes, toggling between different input resolutions while the camera is on helps alleviate the issue.

The V4L service gives an error:

• The vloopback module needs to be running.
• Run

  /sbin/modprobe vloopback

  as root to start the loopback services.