Sony VAIO Camera Driver for Ubuntu

After installing Ubuntu and configuring it to look like windows, one thing that was really lacking was the web cam driver, I could not do video call from Gmail. This time with little easy, I found a link which help to install the driver easily.

First check which is your camera, by typing in the command lsusb, which shows something below.

Bus 006 Device 002: ID 045e:00a4 Microsoft Corp. 
Bus 006 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 003 Device 005: ID 044e:3012 Alps Electric Co., Ltd 
Bus 003 Device 004: ID 044e:3013 Alps Electric Co., Ltd 
Bus 003 Device 003: ID 044e:3010 Alps Electric Co., Ltd Bluetooth Adapter
Bus 003 Device 002: ID 044e:3011 Alps Electric Co., Ltd 
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 05ca:1839 Ricoh Co., Ltd Visual Communication Camera VGP-VCC6 [R5U870]

The camera is from Ricoh Co. Ltd, VGP-VCC6[R5U870] 

The packages provided (both source and binary) include only the loader software and do not contain the microcode, whose copyright and license status is unclear. Instead, a simple shell script is provided that can download and install the microcode directly from the upstream repository.

Installation

========

1. sudo add-apt-repository ppa:r5u87x-loader/ppa

2. sudo apt-get update

3. sudo apt-get install r5u87x

4. sudo /usr/share/r5u87x/r5u87x-download-firmware.sh

(Step 1 only works on Ubuntu 9.10 and newer. On 8.04 you will need to add this PPA to your APT sources manually.)

Supported hardware

================

05ca:1803 Flybook V5

05ca:1810 HP Pavilion Webcam

05ca:1835 Sony Camera VGP-VCC5 (used on Sony Vaio SZ laptops)

05ca:1836 Sony Camera VGP-VCC4 (used on Sony Vaio FE laptops)

05ca:1837 Sony Camera VGP-VCC4 (used on Sony Vaio FZ laptops)

05ca:1839 Sony Camera VGP-VCC6 (used on Sony Vaio CR laptops)

05ca:183a Sony Camera VGP-VCC7 (used on Sony Vaio SZ and TZ11 laptops)

05ca:183b Sony Camera VGP-VCC8 (used on Sony Vaio FZ laptops)

05ca:183e Sony Camera VGP-VCC9 (used on Sony Vaio FZ laptops)

Hope this helps !