This is the FreeBSD' Webcam, DVB, and Remote Control Compatibility List. The main goal of this page is to give an exact answer about which application works with a given cam or DVB. Combinations of the hardware and software mentioned below in the table are known to work.

Please add more lines to the table or ask me to do so by just sending a mail with your Cam/DVB information. Please note: you should only add information you have seen working and not you may think of or imagine that they could work. The contact information (name and/or email addr) is optional: Matthias Apitz

[1]
The built-in microphone of newer Logitech webcams works with snd_uaudio(4) (tested with C160, C210, C270 HD and C310 HD), but it requires the following command after an application (e.g. pwcview or skype) has opened the camera device (/dev/video0) for the first time:
usbconfig -d ugenX.Y do_request 0x22 0x01 0x100 0x86 0x03 0x80 0xBB 0x00
Replace “ugenX.Y” with your device, according to the output from “usbconfig” or “dmesg”. You have to issue that command only once; it remains in effect until you unplug the camera. You can use the following command to test the microphone:
dd if=/dev/dspX.0 of=/dev/dspY.0 bs=64
Where “X” is the pcm number of the microphone, and “Y” is the pcm number of your normal playback device (speakers). The command “cat /dev/sndstat” lists all devices and their numbers.

[2]
When pwcview is run for the first time, it fails with this error message:
libv4l2: error converting / decoding frame data: v4l-convert: error parsing JPEG header: Not a JPG file ?
Error reading from webcam: Input/output error
However, when run for the second time, it works fine.

[3]
USB micro needs:
# usbconfig -d ugen3.2 do_request 0x22 0x01 0x100 0x86 0x03 0x80 0xBB 0x00
# usbconfig -d ugen3.2 reset
# usbconfig -d ugen3.2 do_request 0x22 0x01 0x100 0x86 0x03 0x80 0xBB 0x00
# webcamd

[4]
needs in addition the port linux_v4l2wrapper-kmod-1.0_2 to translate the V4L1 ioctls from the old skype 2.0.0.72;

See also this forum thread for setup/usage hints: http://forums.freebsd.org/viewtopic.php?t=35179

[1]
Needs hardware pidfiltering to receive clean streams (running webcamd with “-m dvb-usb-init.force_pid_filter_usage=1”) which breaks w_scan(1) and scanning in kaffeine too (but not the vdr wirbelscan nor reelchannelscan plugins), workaround is to restart webcamd without -m dvb-usb-init.force_pid_filter_usage=1 for the duration of the scan.

[2]
You can use an universal remote configured with e.g. an rc5 Hauppauge PVR350 keymap, more details in this posting: http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-multimedia/2011-August/012424.html

[3]
You can use the Linux guy's perl script http://git.linuxtv.org/media_tree.git/blob_plain?f=Documentation/dvb/get_dvb_firmware to extract DVB tuner firmwares (needs some Linux tools like wget(1) and md5sum(1), wget is in ports and md5sum is too as gmd5sum in sysutils/coreutils so you need to either symlink it as say ~/bin/md5sum or patch the script.)

[4]
It seems with VDR you can change the osd setting “Setup → DVB → Update channels” to “names and PIDs” or lower to work around this bug. (Or at least make it happen much less often.)

[5]
One user had to downgrade webcamd to 0.1.26 (using portdowngrade) to get MythTV working (w_scan worked), he also got I2C errors logged by webcamd built with DEBUG knob enabled like Linux users reported here: http://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/TechnoTrend_TT-connect_S2-3600 (webcamd 0.1.26 still uses pctv452e-related drivers from s2-liplianin) - it is unclear why this doesn't affect all other users too, maybe there are different hardware revisions of this tuner? Further investigations needed…
Update: this seems to be a bug in the Linux code used by webcamd 3.x that affects only MythTV (but there also all other usb dvb tuners I tested!), see here for a reduced testcase and patch: http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-multimedia/2012-August/013232.html - updated patch for webcamd 3.7.0.x: http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20120926200656.GA60363 (Most others seem to use VDR that isn't affected by this bug.)
Update #2: that fix has meanwhile been committed to Linux media tree and is in webcamd >= 3.9.0.1 .

[6]
There are several different af9035 firmware revisions at http://palosaari.fi/linux/v4l-dvb/firmware/af9035/ - I had most success with dvb-usb-af9035-02.fw_14ae2b81bac90ff5c6b490c225265267_12.13.15.0_6.20.15.0 of the ones I tested (symlinked to /boot/modules/dvb-usb-af9035-02.fw of course.)

[7]
Firmware can be downloaded from: http://kernellabs.com/firmware/technisat-usb2

[1]
The driver in webcamd 0.1.26 seems to be too old for some other mceusb IR hardware (with different usbids than 0x1784:0x0001), if you have this problem try webcamd >= 3.0.0.1 that was committed to ports recently, see the mailing list posts linked from http://people.freebsd.org/~nox/dvb/ for some notes. (all mentioned port updates have been committed in the meantime, including v4l-utils and lirc.)