Creating a V4L driver for a USB camera

[Erik de Castro Lopo <erik@bcode.com>]

Hi all,

I'm a senior software engineer [0] with a small startup. Our product
is Linux based and makes use of a 3M pixel camera. Unfortunately, the
camera we have been using for the last 3 years is no longer being
produced.

We have found two candidate replacement cameras, one with a binary
only driver and user space library and one with a windows driver
but no Linux driver.

My questions:

 - How difficult is it to create a GPL V4L driver for a USB camera
   by snooping the USB traffic of the device when connected to
   a windows machine? The intention is to merge this work into
   the V4L mainline and ultimately the kernel.

 - How much work is involved in the above for someone experienced
   in writing V4L drivers?

 - Are there people involved with the V4L project that would be
   willing to undertake this project under contract?

Obviously, answers to the last question can be send directly to
me :-). The others are probably best sent to the list.

Cheers,
Erik

[0] I am also a FOSS developer. My main two projects are
       http://www.mega-nerd.com/libsndfile/
       http://www.mega-nerd.com/libsamplerate/
    I am also involved with Xiph.org and the Debian project.
-- 
=======================
erik de castro lopo
senior design engineer

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