Adam wrote:

I was just doing some digging looking for a few bits about the QX3 and found http://sourceforge.net/projects/qtx3/

I think that that particular project just petered out a couple of years ago. I downloaded it a couple of days ago but couldn't get it to run.

In addition to TVtime, I've tried Xawtv (which gave correctly-dimensioned pictures on screen but the image capture just gives a technicolour snowstorm effect when the file is viewed) and Mplayer (advertised as being able to view USB webcams or whatever but was far too complicated for me to be able to work out how).

In contrast, getting the 'system' side of things in place seemed easy, even for me. Select the correct bits in the kernel .config, recompile & install kernel, plug QX3 into the USB port and off it all went. Amazing!

What was the price?

Farnell seems to be having a clear-out at the moment and had it for £35 (and no delivery charges for account holders), whereas I'd previously seen it all over the place for quite a bit more than that.

although i recall that maybe intel advertised it as doing 640x480 but in reality the sensor only could capture 320x240 and the upsampling was done in software.

Its resolution is 352x288 - I believe that might be quarter-CIF? The luminance resolution is double the chrominance. I wouldn't say that it was exactly broadcast-quality but it's good enough at the price to have a closer gander at some small items. Truly it's a bit cheap and plastic-y, but, at the price, what else could one expect?

Cheers,

Gerald.