I just bought an Acer Aspire 3830TG, it comes with an integrated 1.3M HD Webcam. Before buying it i tried with a bootable Lubuntu usb stick, everything worked well except for the webcam, which i thought I had to tweak.

The thing is that it seems the camera should work with no problems in ubuntu. The driver is detected, I try

dmesg | grep uvcvideo

and the output is

[   12.226174] uvcvideo: Found UVC 1.00 device 1.3M HD WebCam (058f:b002)
[   12.245553] usbcore: registered new interface driver uvcvideo

I've also tried using different software (guvcview is black when camera output is MJPG and turns to funny colors when YU12 or YV12, cheese is always black, camorama is always with funny colors...).

I should have checked that it was working properly with the default os (windows) but now it's too late for that. I even booted with a official Ubuntu Quantal distro from the usb pen, and the results are the same.

so, my question is: is there any way to check that the camera is righmt or broken? So, if it's broken, at least i can go to the shop, show them that it's really broken and get an external webcam for free, or st like that.

cheers.

UPDATE 1

Thanks, jrp. I run sudo lsinput, and the output info about my video is the following:

/dev/input/event6
   bustype : BUS_USB
   vendor  : 0x58f
   product : 0xb002
   version : 2
   name    : "1.3M HD WebCam"
   phys    : "usb-0000:00:1a.0-1.3/button"
   bits ev : EV_SYN EV_KEY

/dev/input/event7
   bustype : BUS_HOST
   vendor  : 0x0
   product : 0x6
   version : 0
   name    : "Video Bus"
   phys    : "LNXVIDEO/video/input0"
   bits ev : EV_SYN EV_KEY

With this info, i'm not pretty sure about running the luvcview command. If I run luvcview -d /dev/video0 -L, the output is the following:

SDL information:
  Video driver: x11
  A window manager is available
Device information:
  Device path:  /dev/video0
{ pixelformat = 'YUYV', description = 'YUV 4:2:2 (YUYV)' }
{ discrete: width = 640, height = 480 }
    Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, 
{ discrete: width = 160, height = 120 }
    Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, 
{ discrete: width = 176, height = 144 }
    Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, 
{ discrete: width = 320, height = 240 }
    Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, 
{ discrete: width = 352, height = 288 }
    Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, 
{ discrete: width = 1280, height = 720 }
    Time interval between frame: 1/7, 1/5, 
{ discrete: width = 1280, height = 800 }
    Time interval between frame: 1/7, 1/5, 
{ discrete: width = 1280, height = 960 }
    Time interval between frame: 1/7, 1/5, 
{ discrete: width = 1280, height = 1024 }
    Time interval between frame: 1/7, 1/5, 
{ pixelformat = 'MJPG', description = 'MJPEG' }
{ discrete: width = 640, height = 480 }
    Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, 
{ discrete: width = 160, height = 120 }
    Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, 
{ discrete: width = 176, height = 144 }
    Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, 
{ discrete: width = 320, height = 240 }
    Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, 
{ discrete: width = 352, height = 288 }
    Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, 
{ discrete: width = 1280, height = 720 }
    Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, 
{ discrete: width = 1280, height = 800 }
    Time interval between frame: 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, 
{ discrete: width = 1280, height = 960 }
    Time interval between frame: 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, 
{ discrete: width = 1280, height = 1024 }
    Time interval between frame: 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, 
{ pixelformat = 'RGB3', description = 'RGB3' }
{ discrete: width = 640, height = 480 }
    Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, 
{ discrete: width = 160, height = 120 }
    Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, 
{ discrete: width = 176, height = 144 }
    Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, 
{ discrete: width = 320, height = 240 }
    Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, 
{ discrete: width = 352, height = 288 }
    Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, 
{ discrete: width = 1280, height = 720 }
    Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, 
{ discrete: width = 1280, height = 800 }
    Time interval between frame: 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, 
{ discrete: width = 1280, height = 960 }
    Time interval between frame: 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, 
{ discrete: width = 1280, height = 1024 }
    Time interval between frame: 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, 
{ pixelformat = 'BGR3', description = 'BGR3' }
{ discrete: width = 640, height = 480 }
    Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, 
{ discrete: width = 160, height = 120 }
    Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, 
{ discrete: width = 176, height = 144 }
    Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, 
{ discrete: width = 320, height = 240 }
    Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, 
{ discrete: width = 352, height = 288 }
    Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, 
{ discrete: width = 1280, height = 720 }
    Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, 
{ discrete: width = 1280, height = 800 }
    Time interval between frame: 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, 
{ discrete: width = 1280, height = 960 }
    Time interval between frame: 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, 
{ discrete: width = 1280, height = 1024 }
    Time interval between frame: 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, 
{ pixelformat = 'YU12', description = 'YU12' }
{ discrete: width = 640, height = 480 }
    Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, 
{ discrete: width = 160, height = 120 }
    Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, 
{ discrete: width = 176, height = 144 }
    Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, 
{ discrete: width = 320, height = 240 }
    Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, 
{ discrete: width = 352, height = 288 }
    Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, 
{ discrete: width = 1280, height = 720 }
    Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, 
{ discrete: width = 1280, height = 800 }
    Time interval between frame: 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, 
{ discrete: width = 1280, height = 960 }
    Time interval between frame: 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, 
{ discrete: width = 1280, height = 1024 }
    Time interval between frame: 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, 
{ pixelformat = 'YV12', description = 'YV12' }
{ discrete: width = 640, height = 480 }
    Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, 
{ discrete: width = 160, height = 120 }
    Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, 
{ discrete: width = 176, height = 144 }
    Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, 
{ discrete: width = 320, height = 240 }
    Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, 
{ discrete: width = 352, height = 288 }
    Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, 
{ discrete: width = 1280, height = 720 }
    Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, 
{ discrete: width = 1280, height = 800 }
    Time interval between frame: 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, 
{ discrete: width = 1280, height = 960 }
    Time interval between frame: 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, 
{ discrete: width = 1280, height = 1024 }
    Time interval between frame: 1/15, 1/10, 1/5,

if i run luvcview by itself, the image is funny (blue and red colors, mainly, with myself in negative state).

tx