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I'm really learning to hate technology.
I used to be good with it. I used to be smart. Apparently at this point I should sell a kidney and buy a Mac (a used one).
I'm probably just exhausted from learning things that I only ever need to learn once, for one thing, and then I don't have to remember them. But shit it's fucking exhausting.
Every goddamned day it seems is a new "minor hiccup" preventing me from moving forward. I either invest hours of my time to troubleshoot (something that pays worse and worse dividends every single time I do it), or I give up on it.
I would be absolutely fine if being stupid didn't cost vast amounts of money and time.
Getting dumber as I get older is going to make life exponentially more difficult.
You probably want to mute this thread. The frustration is mounting and it's getting harder and harder to not feel stupid.
So I will continue to bitch about it.
Sorry.
If there are any actual experts on getting a DSLR camera to properly work under #Debian I would appreciate a DM. I've read the documentation and done the things that I understand, but there is a lot that I *don't* understand and trying to learn it seems to be an uphill battle.
It just occurred to me that the first flavour of Linux that I ever installed was (I think) Slackware 3.1 circa 1994 or so. I've been doing this shit for literally 30 years.
I should not be this lost.
@roknrol
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it’s likely as much things you “know,” getting in the way as anything you don’t, you’d
probably find it easier if you’d never seen a camera before. They keep changing things to disable existing knowledge, take everything out of our hands.
@punishmenthurts It sure fucking feels that way.
@roknrol I can't help directly, but I might be able to help you with troubleshooting it. Am I right that this is a USB device? You mention docs, can you link me in?
@cybervegan The only software that's currently recognizing my camera is
Debian does not throw any errors, but I believe that it's recognizing my camera as a mass storage device instead of a video device.
[113953.949829] usb 1-1: new high-speed USB device number 14 using xhci_hcd
[113954.099368] usb 1-1: New USB device found, idVendor=04b0, idProduct=043d, bcdDevice= 1.12
[113954.099379] usb 1-1: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
[113954.099384] usb 1-1: Product: NIKON DSC D3400
[113954.099387] usb 1-1: Manufacturer: NIKON
[113954.099390] usb 1-1: SerialNumber: 0000003810192
The software does not seem to have any logging enabled, or if so (it's an AppImage) I'm not sure where it's at. When I run from CLI there's no feedback at all.
The software that's working is too advanced for me - I'm not a Camera person, so I'm trying to get *anything* else to work (Cheese, guvcview, etc)
The documentation that I'm referring to is basically every troubleshooting link that I can find on Google for "DSLR +linux". A lot of which don't really apply to my situation, and almost all "solved" options are being fixed with things like replacing the USB cables.
The options that I'm finding for changing it from a mass storage device to a video device are over my head - more than willing to link them, but there are a whole bunch that I've looked through. A lot of this is just way over my head.
https://jahed.dev/2023/10/22/usb-audio-video-capture-on-linux/
@roknrol Ok, so the kernel seems to be recognising your device, which is a good start. So, to be clear (just so I know what you're trying to achieve), you want to use your DSLR as a "webcam" and take the feed directly over USB?
@cybervegan Yes, that's correct. I still need to sort out audio, but I expect that'll be a lot easier to deal with. The primary issue at hand is using the camera as a webcam.
@roknrol Ok, so what I've found so far (and I might be retracing your steps, so bear with me) is that the D3400 does allow "USB tethering", but you "need to use" Nikon's "Webcam Utility" which only supports Windows and Mac. Others have tried to use Wine to run the Windows version, but it looks like that's a hiding to nowhere, tbh.
To run this on Linux, you'd need a driver that can treat the camera as a stream source, and I think you've already discovered that the standard driver can only treat the camera as a mass storage device.
Another option apparently is to get a USB HDMI video capture gizmo, and there is probably one (or more) that is supported by Linux, but I understand you may not want to go this route.
More research to do, but I thought I'd give you an update...
@cybervegan Thanks bro - I've been beating my head against a wall for the last week, so I don't expect any easy solutions. It's probably largely due to the camera mounting as a storage device, but since the one software package has managed to solve the problem, there IS a solution.
I can always just use the camera as is and transfer the video files across, but that's a headache I'd prefer to avoid...just extra steps for something that "should" work.
I appreciate the effort though - I really do. Any help is muchly appreciated.
@roknrol Unfortunately, choosing the path less taken (Linux) means a lot of head-to-wall action. Which package are you referring to, and where are you getting stuck?
@cybervegan qDslrDashboard actually works as a functioning webcam...but because it's an AppImage, I don't seem to be getting any logging information to point me into *how* it's working.
I'm probably going to have to learn a bunch of camera jargon to be functional, but it doesn't seem to come very easily to me.
@roknrol I know rite. Same here - I'd have thought that being a technical domain with loads of interesting little facts to learn, I'd be WELL into photography and cameras, but... point'n'shoot is all I can muster. I don't even own a camera these days... just use my phone!
@cybervegan My wife bought the camera for me years ago and I still have yet to learn how to use it properly. I figure that since I have time (and need) it would be easier to pick up, but...well...nope. I'm sure with time that will change, but my brain is just too fuzzy anymore to feel confident.
@roknrol Dude you sound burnt out. Don't beat yourself up over it though. I know it can be frustrating, but honestly, berating yourself won't actually help. Not the best taker of my own advice of course - I've been getting very frustrated with software I'm using for my laser cutter, which seems to not work twice the same way sometimes. As we age, I think we end up stuck in a "time when we knew everything" and then just can't manage to add to our repertoire. Covid brain fog is a real thing though - I still don't feel as lucid as I did before the pandemic.
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not sure it's COVID or age, but I grew up with lightswitches that you moved UP and DOWN, on the wall and now in my new apartment there's the new sort, paddles, I might call them, where it's more like a button you PRESS INTO the wall, and I've been here five years and it just pisses me off that I should HAVE TO relearn such a basic thing. I suppose I might be able to learn it, but it pisses me off, and that's all I remember every time.
@cybervegan @roknrol
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putting a little more thought to this, it used to just be a gesture, a wave up, if it failed, if's a room with two switches, another wave downward did it. Now it's a button and you actually have to locate the bastard, you can't just wave at it. In the dark.
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I'm playing old man yells at cloud, but it's got a little reality too. Dammit.
Get off my lawn. 
@punishmenthurts @cybervegan Seriously, I get you.
I can't look at a single piece of misbehaving hardware without considering whether the IRQ or DMA might be wrong, and those haven't really been a problem since 2000 or so.
Like, I'm in France now, so obviously some things will be different, and for *those* things (the light switches, the water taps) I'm ok with making the adjustment. But computers? That used to be my thing. I used to *live* in the realm of technology.
And it's all so foreign to me, it's like going back 300 years in time and not understanding English.
@punishmenthurts @roknrol For real, for real. The "smartification" of white goods winds me up no end: why dies my fridge freezer need a colour LCD display and 3 buttons? Even moreso, why does it want WiFi connectivity?
@cybervegan @roknrol
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my electric kettle before this one - I checked this one - you'd plug it in, or set the jug on it, and you'd have to wait for it to boot up before it gave you an "On," button. I really resented those seconds.
@punishmenthurts @cybervegan I adamantly refuse to purchase "smart" devices, and if I absolutely must, I'll go through great pains to disable the "smart" functions on them.
I like that if you tap on the glass on my fridge the light turns on without having to open the door. That's exactly as much "smart" as it needs.
@roknrol @punishmenthurts this was definitely a big consideration when we decided we couldn't make the rusty old fridge and freezer with broken drawers last any longer, and bit the bullet to but a new combined one earlier this year. More than half have whizz bang "smart" features these days. Within our price range and space confines, this Liebherr brand fridge freezer looked to be the best built. It has a colour display but doesn't demand connection to the WiFi (though I think it supports it). It's superfluous at best but at least it's optional. But to set the temperature you have to use the menu, there is no hardware knob to turn.
Edit: I would have rather not had any digital tech in it at all, but none of the ones without it were suitable in either terms of dimensions or build quality.
@cybervegan @punishmenthurts Enshittification continues apace.
@roknrol @punishmenthurts Is even go as far as to say accelerating. I have to say it feels weird that I'm such a Luddite about it, but I think it's because the features they add don't seem to IMPROVE the products they are applied to, and make unnecessary dependencies ... Like phone home and "ota" updates you can't control, causing loss of formerly standard features or changes to subscription model after the fact.
We came to a somewhat paradoxical decision about one crucial appliance.
We had a filter coffee maker. Dumb, but with a timer.
Problem is that now we're retired, we get up when we feel like it. But we still require a near-instant hit of decent coffee. But the filter machine with timer doesn't come on when powered up - you have to press a button (and also reset the clock if it being wrong and/or flashing annoys you, which it does me).
I crawled around in the loft and found an even older, dumber, machine with no timer and a mechanical on/off switch. Still complete and in working order. Connected it via a Tapo smart plug.
Now, whoever wakes first opens the bedroom door and says "Alexa coffee on" (no Echo in the bedroom - house rules - but one on the landing).
Of course someone still has to go down to the kitchen and pour it, but only once it has had time to finish glooping.
@ratcatcher @roknrol @punishmenthurts This is probably why I prefer a coffee press: quick to prepare, but quite manual. I don't like the taste of filter papers, nor the mess, and bonus, I can take my little stainless steel coffee press to work in my rucksack! Had it 10 years, used daily or more. No electrics to go wrong; no mechanical parts. Negligible maintenance requirements...
Admittedly, you can't run it on a timer, but I;m not that impatient that I can't wait for the kettle to boil or the coffee to brew for a minute. When I take coffee to work, I use pre-ground, but when I'm home, I like to grind my own using a hand grinder...
@punishmenthurts @roknrol it's even worse when you've fine some embedded programming and you know how quickly these things should boot up. It would be a challenge to notice the start up delay on a common dev board like Arduino or ESP8266 - they're pretty much instantaneous.
@roknrol Ok, so here may be a hint - there's an FAQ for INDI (another program that does capture from DSLRs, mainly I think for Astronomy) that suggests that *automount* will "grab" your device and prevent connection in streaming mode: https://www.indilib.org/forum/ccds-dslrs/783-indi-dslrs-faq.html
Have you looked at INDI, as it may be another option - even runs on RPi, so probably pretty basic requirements.
@cybervegan I have *not* actually seen this yet, so it's quite promising. I've opened the page in a new tab and will take a peek when I'm less drunk lol
@roknrol drink plenty H2O bro. Hope you find some answers for your Nikon soon ;-)
@roknrol
I'm hardly an expert, but I did connect my D7100 to my Debian desktop once using Gphoto2. I didn't do much with it and it ran the battery down fairly quickly.
@HankB gphoto2 can't see my camera. I do not know why. I'm not shy of cli, but most of the cli/camera stuff mystifies me.
I'll take a look though, when I'm back at the machine - thanks!
Exiled NYer- Connie You can see if there are still any M-1 chips in the new old stock of 2000 MacBooks are around.
@Pagan_Activist It wasn't really a joke because it's not funny, but I can't afford a Mac (or a kidney). I'm not sure if it qualifies as sarcasm either; mostly just frustration.
But thank you