Arch Linux

shtrom

Member

Registered: 2009-06-10

Posts: 10

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Re: How to use the IPU6 webcam with kernel 6.10+?

Steps that should replicate my setup:

Thanks for this! I finally have a working IPU6 cam on my 2024 XPS 16 (9640) https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Dell_XPS_16_(9640) with 6.18.4-arch1-1 and the V4L2 loopback.

merijn

Member

Registered: 2009-02-06

Posts: 10

Re: How to use the IPU6 webcam with kernel 6.10+?

I've been able to get my webcam to work with libcamera, gstreamer, v4l2loopback, and chromium. I'll share the details here.
I'm not using the intel proprietary packages (intel-ipu6-dkms-git intel-ipu6-camera-bin intel-ipu6-camera-hal-git icamerasrc-git)

With the newest kernel I could immediately get a picture with qcam but I could not get it to work with either firefox or chromium.
With the following configuration I am finally able to use my webcam with nextcloud talk under chromium. The quality is not great, its greenish and a bit low on light. But its responsive and very usable.

laptop: Dell Latitude 7450
Kernel: 6.18.4-arch1-1
Sensor: INT3537
Camera name: hi556

dmesg |grep intel-ip6
intel-ipu6 0000:00:05.0: Found supported sensor INT3537:00

recognised by libcamera as: (leaving out the warnings here)

cam -l
Available cameras:
1: 'hi556' (\_SB_.PC00.LNK1)

Related packages I have installed:

local/pipewire-v4l2 1:1.4.9-2
local/v4l2loopback-dkms 0.15.3-1
local/v4l2loopback-utils 0.15.3-1
local/gst-plugin-libcamera 0.6.0-2
local/libcamera 0.6.0-2
local/libcamera-ipa 0.6.0-2
local/libcamera-tools 0.6.0-2
local/pipewire-libcamera 1:1.4.9-2
local/gstreamer 1.26.10-2

Create the following file:

cat /etc/modprobe.d/v4l2loopback.conf     
options v4l2loopback video_nr=60 card_label="v4l2_hi556_loopback" exclusive_caps=1

modprobe v4l2loopback

Now you've created a v4l2 loopback device /dev/video60

Use gstreamer to send the signal from your webcam to the v4l2loopback device:

gst-launch-1.0 libcamerasrc name="hi556" ! queue ! videoconvert ! video/x-raw,format=YUY2 ! v4l2sink name=v4l2sink-hi556 device=/dev/video60

I noticed that adding any other video settings here, like the resolution, would result in no video output
if all goes well you should see a counter going up (counting seconds of video stream sent to v4l2 sink.

Test it with ffplay:

ffplay /dev/video60

After this you should see a webcam device in chromium called: "v4l2_hi556_loopback" (don't let ffplay run in the background)

First I had "PipeWire Camera support" disabled in chrome://flags/
But now I've set it to "Default" again and its still working
Firefox does not see my v4l2loopback device for some reason.
obs works

Last edited by merijn (Yesterday 19:55:50)