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Webcam disabling

Posted: 13 Aug 2013, 01:30
by chmol
Hello,

I've been using samsung-tools since 3years now with ubuntu and just installed crunchbang. The problem is; followed this tutorial to install all the tools, https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebia ... ung%20N150 and everything work quite well except one, the fn option which allow me to disable the webcam and also samsung-tools-preferences who refuse to start ( bash: /usr/bin/samsung-tools-preferences : /usr/bin/python2 : no such files )

I don"t really care about samsung-tools-preferences but disabling the webcam help me to preserve the battery ( something like 30 minutes gain ... ). Does someone know the command line who allow me to turn off the cam ?

Thanks in advance :)

Re: Webcam disabling

Posted: 11 Nov 2013, 11:52
by maettugi
You could disable your webcam by unloading the driver for the webcam.

The procedure on my Samsung P510 with Debian Wheezy was as follows:

1. Find out details about your webcam, e.g. the name. In my case I did:

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$lsusb
$[...]
$Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0ac8:c326 Z-Star
$Microelectronics Corp. Namuga 1.3M Webcam
So we found a name: Namuga

2. Find out which driver operates this webcam:

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$dmesg | grep Namuga
$uvcvideo: Found UVC 1.00 device Namuga 1.3M
$Webcam (0ac8:c326)
In this case the name of the driver is: uvcvideo

3. Check whether the driver is actually loaded:

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$lsmod | grep uvcvideo
The driver should appear.

4. Unload the driver manually:

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modprobe -r uvcvideo
5. Check whether the camera is now disabled. Try to start an application that uses the webcam. In my case I have a application called "cheese". I start this "cheese"-thingy - and it reports "no device found". Wonderful!

6. Disable your webcam permanently. Become root and enter in /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf:

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blacklist uvcvideo
As i said, this was successful on Debian Wheezy.

Re: Webcam disabling

Posted: 11 Nov 2013, 14:30
by chmol
Hey,

Thanks a lot this worked well. I didn't had a name for my cam

Code: Select all

Bus 001 Device 002: ID 0ac8:c33f Z-Star Microelectronics Corp. Webcam
but the driver was the same :)