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Gtkam --- useless!!!!!!!

October 06, 2011 — BarryK
I have got to let off some steam about this. Gtkam is a GTK GUI for libgphoto, for accessing photos in digital cameras. Some cameras have standard USB-storage interfaces, which does not need libgphoto of Gtkam to access. However, many cameras do need libgphoto.

I have only got one digital camera, a Fujifilm Finepix A610, that I have owned for a few years. When I first acquired it, Gtkam kind of worked -- but it crashed at the drop of a hat. Many others reported the same experience.

I think it was about a year ago that Gtkam actually became fairly stable and usable with my camera.

Now, the latest version 0.1.18 and the previous 0.1.17, won't detect my camera at all -- perhaps it doesn't like libusb-compat and libusb1. If I try and run the option to choose which camera, it hangs.

Yet, the CLI app, gphoto2, works like a charm. This lists my camera name and USB port:

# gphoto2 --auto-detect

Model Port
----------------------------------------------------------
USB PTP Class Camera usb:002,014


Various other commands can access the photos, for example this downloads them all:

# gphoto2 --get-all-files

Then I tried 'gphotofs', a FUSE filesystem for gphoto2. I just did this:

# mkdir /mnt/photos
# gphotofs /mnt/photos

...hey presto, there were all my photos in /mnt/photos!

I don't know why no one has done this yet. A simple GUI for gphoto2 and maybe gphotofs. Well, if no one volunteers to do this, I'll knock up a little GUI and give Gtkam the kick.

Comments

Because ...


Yes of course
Username: BarryK
"I have let off steam now, so will stop rubbishing Gtkam. jamesbond, You are right of course. My camera has an SD card also, as do most these days. If you have an SD reader, no need for all this libgphoto/Gtkam stuff. But, assuming that there is still a need to plug a camera via it's USB cable, a simple gphoto2 GUI would be good. It would seem that there is a need, people keep posting about using Gtkam and running into problems.

Gtkam --- useless!!!!!!!
Username: Sage
"Well said! So many distros bundle it, but it's f-ing useless. I raised the issue of Cheese for Puppy on the Forum recently, which seems to detect all my webcams without the Mickey Mouse of going through the Gtkam list which doesn't include any of my four. A kind Forum member tried to help me with Cheese for Puppy but hit the same dep. grief as I did, so needs a [i]real[/i] expert, please! Another good candidate is Kamoso but no idea about how to use it with Puppy, either. When choosing a webcam utility it's all about detection and universality. As usual, the Yanks only understand overpiced badges and boxes. No idea why KJ, [i]supra[/i], wants to tell us about his cameras - this is about webcams!

?
Username: aragon2
"Sage what that ranting. Gtkam is about photo-digicams not webcams... And yes, a little gui for gphotofs would be grea!

Digital camera gui
Username: BarryK
"Dougal, It would be great if you could get that going with a later kernel. Most puppies are now using udev version 167, which works with recent kernels. In the meantine, I will knock up a basic GUI using gphoto2 and gphotofs. A note about my scream that Gtkam is "useless". This is after years of frustration. Myself and many others have found consistently that Gtkam would fail yet the commandline tool gphoto2 would work. This has been the experience on a wide variety of hardware.

Camera SD card
Username: BarryK
"A note about taking the SD card from camera and plugging into a SD reader. I think that the camera maintains control-files, concerning the photos, so you need to be careful, don't delete or otherwise mess around with the photos on the SD card. On the other-hand, if you access the camera memory via libgphoto, then such details are managed, so you can delete photos. I think. So, libgphoto would be the preferred way of accessing the photos. Plus of course it handles whatever kind of memory is in the camera.

Puppy 'Phone Home'
Username: lobster
"I use the SD card/USB adapter route for camera. GUI - gooey - yum My Android phone uses a mini to USB connection and once mounted (how Linxy) I can access all my phone taken pics . . . The phone was cheap and cheerful - pics are great, vids - m m m - at the moment my phone is texting me to try and extort monthly payment plans . . . It is a computer may have to teach it some manners by rooting . . . :happy: Looking forward to trying new Woof in Puppy 5.3 RC which is getting a lot of focus - Wary still going well though . . .


Tags: wary