Videoconferencing under FreeBSD

This report was the result of some experimentation inspired by the recent purchase by CAIA of Logitech QuickCam Express Webcams. Windows is not the only OS used at CAIA, in fact, FreeBSD is commonly used for experimental purposes and also as a desktop OS by many within CAIA. Given these new cameras, it was interesting to see whether or not they could be used in the FreeBSD environment as well as the Windows environment, and particularly with an application for which webcams are ideally suited for - video conferencing. The effort in this experiment involved two stages: Getting the cameras to work with FreeBSD, Running video-conferencing software with FreeBSD. The first task proved impossible to complete. Logitech, the makers of the Quickcam Express camera, only provide Windows drivers and do not provide any technical documentation to aid in the development of third-party drivers. While some work is being done to reverse engineer some drivers, this is being performed in the Linux environment and is not yet ported to FreeBSD. The second task was more successful. The GnomeMeeting application can be successfully installed and executed under FreeBSD. Further, GnomeMeeting is compatible with, and can make calls to, Windows computers running Microsoft NetMeeting. GnomeMeeting users can properly decode video streams sent from NetMeeting enable workstations, allowing half-duplex video conferencing calls between a GnomeMeeting and a NetMeeting user.