# STK1160 EasyCap

## phobos13013

Anyone have experience or insight into getting a working video cap adapter working?  I have an analog to USB one based on stk1160 architecture.  I have the driver built into the kernel and it shows up in dmesg as video0 no problem.  When I go to use vlc for record all i get is a green screen.  Not sure if my problems are hardware or software based at this time so I am lost at even a triage.  Please do let me know any specific outputs that would help diagnosis, or if you can point me to any software guides maybe they will do the grick.

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## Roman_Gruber

https://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/Stk1160_based_USB_2.0_video_and_audio_capture_devices

https://wiki.ubuntuusers.de/EasyCAP_DC60_USB_Audio_und_Videograbber/ in german, but i think google translate or the commands listed there should give a glue anyway

http://www.instructables.com/id/EasyCap-DC60-STK1160-VLC-Xubuntu-1310-OpenSource-V/

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Did you just asked here? OR DID YOU AS A DECENT USER, tried solving it yourself with teh help of the net and existing articles?

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## phobos13013

Roman_Gruber,

  Thanks so much for your patient and detailed help!  I have been struggling with this device on my own for about two or three weeks now and have seen the first link which has not resolved my issues, as for the german link, its news to me.  Cannot believe that my english searches of which I am a native speaker and where my searches are originating from did not come up with this very esoteric and on first glance useless link.  I will try the instructables link, but I doubt it will bring much help.  But like I say, thanks so much for immediately jumping to conclusion and for your five minutes of farting out some help without some serious passive-aggressive abuse.

Man, the quality of Gentoo support has tanked in the last year or two.

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## Roman_Gruber

HAve you booted up ubuntu to see if it works there. These link claim that the device should work there.

you may also bought a "fake" chip (cough EBAY), broken device, device with not the standard wiring, so the software does not work out of the box

some setup error. no power suply for example, wrong wiring ...

I usually get my hardware from some certain online store, when it does not work instantly, or has flaws, i return it. I have returned many products in past years because tehy did not meet my expectations. These days even SSDs are also bells and whistles regarding write / read performance ...

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I want to ask you: Have you already used these instructions in those guides so far?

HAve you checked those settings for video for linux? 

Your hardware should be similar to setup as the "ordinary" "laptop" "webcam" ... please verify if you ahve those settings. => gentoo wiki for example is a starting point / arch linux wiki ...

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## phobos13013

Roman_Gruber,

  I do not have Ubuntu, I am gentoo only on this box.  The only other device I have is running trisquel and it will not perform this kind of function for obvious reasons.  The problem I am having is that I have no understanding of V4L and most of these step-by-steps assume this is all working out of box.  Is there a V4L use flag or something, is it an environment?  I do not understand how v4l works.  The instructuables link suggests it should just show up in capture device on vlc, but there is no such option there (just JACK for snd streams i guess, TV - Digital which does not apply, and Desktop).

The device was bought at a Frys Electronics although it is certainly possible they are selling some trading post type adapter which can also be found on ebay; although they are a "reputable" store in the states.

I have tried to follow the step-by-step as they are presented, but there is not a lot of explanation of what is going on at each step and a lot of presumption that the next step will just work the way they are suggesting.  But for instance, when I go to select the capture device, it is not there and it gives me no way to figure out why or how to make it appear there although commands suggest it is working fine.

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## phobos13013

Well, this is probably a break-through!  I did not have v4l compiled in kernel didnt even know this was a thing. Will report back if this resolves issue!

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## phobos13013

Negative, i built v4l into kernel after finding that buried in hidden options; i rebuilt my system with v4l* in use flags, still vlc complains it cannot access the device.  dmesg now states there are three devices created as described below:

```
[    0.180497] Linux video capture interface: v2.00

[    0.678194] vivid-000: V4L2 capture device registered as video0

[    0.678337] vivid-000: V4L2 output device registered as video1

[    1.089506] usb 6-1: video interface 0 found

[    1.737354] stk1160 6-1:1.0: V4L2 device registered as video2
```

anybody have any next step ideas?  Both vlc and mplayer state they cannot access the device stream.  What am i missing?

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## phobos13013

The saga continues, I installed the v4l-utils which I found in emerge which gave some hardware insight but i am flying blind.  I tried to install cheese which brought in a bunch of libs that might have helped (although cheese itself was non-functional so i uninstalled).  Now in vlc, I am able to access video0 (none of the other video devices created are accessible tho) and so I am able to see snow when I play the stream and I can hear the audio, but thats it.  Nothing I do changes the snow so I do not think that is an actual feed.  For a long while it was just a test pattern so I assume that was something internal to the device.

I will keep working on it, but I am running out of options quick.

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