This detailed, technical articles describes Linux's V4L2 (Video for Linux 2) interface, along with the first steps toward developing a device driver that uses it. The article was contributed by Vladimir Davydov, an engineer with Promwad, an embedded development services company located in Minsk, Belarus.

Promwad has used the V4L2 interface in several development projects, Davydov reports. The article is based on Linux 2.6.28, and may not apply to other kernel versions, he notes.

Topics covered in the paper include:

• Free userspace software packages that use the V4L2 interface
• The videodev base module
• The VIVI driver, which emulates a real video device and serves as a “stub” driver
• The kernel's V4L libraries (media/v4l2-dev.h, media/videobuf-core.h, and drivers/media/video/videobuf-core.c)
• V4L2 driver initialization and registration, with code examples

Click below to read the full article, which is the first of a two-part series on the subject:

 
This article was originally published on LinuxDevices.com and has been donated to the open source community by QuinStreet Inc. Please visit LinuxToday.com for up-to-date news and articles about Linux and open source.