Hi All,

Sorry couldn't post on earlier, been busy with some work anyways, one of the most discussed issues regarding Windows CE 6.0 has got to be the webcam interface so, lets have a look at what is what. There are two popular methods for doing this:

1: As described in Mike Hall's article on MSDN Mike Hall's article and

2: The open source webcam project from Codeplex written by Mr. Douglas Boling

In my project I worked with the webcam project developed by Mr.Douglas Bloing simply because its a lot easier to implement, however the only short coming in this method is that it only worked with Logitech QuickCam Pro 5000. I did try working with another model but, I did not have any luck with it.

So lets have a look at how to build a subproject to get the webcam working with windows CE 6.0.

Two components are needed to build this subproject:

1: Windows Embedded CE 6.0 USB Camera Driver

2:Windows CE 6.0 Webcam Project by Mr. D.Boling

This time around I thought of putting a lot of pictures in, instead of writing, so here it goes.

As usual we start with the BSP selection

webcam_1           webcam_2             webcam_3
Figure 1: Windows Embedded 6.0 design wizard.          Figure 2: BSP selection window                                           Figure 3: Design Template Selection
          
 webcam_4           webcam_5             webcam_6          
  Figure 4: Design Template Variant                                   Figure 5: Applications Media                                               Figure 6: Networking & Communications                                

  webcam_7          webcam_8             webcam_9
   Figure 7: Adding Wireless LAN (Optional)                   Figure 8: TCP/IPV4 Support(optional)                                 Figure 9: Design Project wizard complete

  webcam_10           webcam_11
  Figure 10: NDIS Acknowledgement(Click Ack)               Figure 11: VS 2005 IDE

So far we have done the basic new project wizard which everyone is familier with I thought I needed to post it just so you don't have to go all the way back to the earlier posts, moving on, we will now start with adding the necessary components required for this project. The selected components are highlighted in blue.

webcam_12           webcam_13             webcam_14             
Figure 12: Applications –End User components            Figure 13: Core OS Services                                                  Figure 14: USB Host Support                                              

webcam_15                webcam_16                  webcam_17
Figure 15: USB Storage Class driver support                   Figure 16: File System & Data Store                                     Figure 17: File System

 webcam_18              webcam_19           webcam_20
  Figure 18: RAM and ROM File system                                 Figure 19: Registry Storage                                               Figure 20: Third Party Components

  webcam_21              webcam_22
   Figure 21: Autolaunch & CoreCon                                       Figure 22: Third Party components added

This completes most of the things that we need to build the webcam project, so, one last thing remains recall the webcam subproject that we downloaded from codeplex earlier, we have to unzip it and copy it to the OS design folder located at C:\WINCE600\OSDesigns\WinCE_Webcam. Once this is done you go to VS 2005 IDE Solution Explorer tab and right click on the subprojects and add existing subproject and select the webcam project that you previously copied into the OS folder as shown in the Figure 23.

webcam_32          webcam_33
Figure 23: Adding the WebCam Subproject                  Figure 24: Webcam Subproject added

That completes the process, all we need to do now is build the OS but, before we start the build we have to do certain tweaks,

webcam_23          webcam_24             webcam_25             
Figure 25: Configuration manager                                    Figure 26: Select Release Build                                            Figure 27: Modifying Project Properties                               

webcam_27               webcam_28                webcam_30
Figure 28: removing KITL                                                   Figure 29: Adding environment Variable(1)                      Figure 30: Adding Environment variable(2)

     
             

Now the OS is all set for the build.

webcam_34
Figure 31: OS build

Assuming that everything went according to plan and the OS is build without any errors, we will move ahead to download the OS onto the eBox. For this we will configure a static IP on the development workstation in order to setup communication with the eBox. Open LAN connection Properties and manually add the static IP I used 192.168.2.231 since my eBox is configure with 192.168.2.232 static IP.

webcam_38            webcam_40
Figure 32: Static IP setup                                                     Figure 33: Target Connectivity option

Now just download the OS by attaching to the eBox and we are set. Once the OS is downloaded open My Devices from the CE desktop and find and locate the file Camtest2, if the build is done properly double clicking the Camtest2.exe should start the webcam.

sample

First picture taken from the webcam.

Hope you all liked it, please let me know if I have missed anything or done anything incorrect.

Thanks for reading