#Loopback device install
#Loopback device driver

To run make the following must be available on you machine. There is a good chance that the make will not work and give you a long list of errors. This way you can more easily experiment with different versions simply by changing the link. I recommend creating a symbolic link to the current version. You can rename it to vloopback (mv vloopback-1.1-rc1 vloopback). You now have a directory called vloopback-1.1-rc1. Untar and uncompress the file to the place you want the program installed. Place the file in a place of your own choice.

#Loopback device install

Now you need to install the video loopback device.Дownload the latest video4linux loopback device. You may need to set the ownership and permissions (chown and chmod) to be the same as the video devices that were already there. Note that the video device number is the same as the last parameter given on each line. So you will need additional 8 video devices. You will need two extra devices for each video pipe that you want.ДЇor example if you have 4 cameras they will probably run at /dev/video0, /dev/video1, /dev/video2, and /dev/video3. At least not when you have this document available.ДЇirst you must prepare your system for more video devices. Installing the video loopback device is not difficult. Camstream is 'fooled' to think it is looking at a real camera. You can then tell motion to 'pipe' the video signal to the /dev/video5 and look at the pictures live using e.g. When you install the video loopback device it will create an input - for example /dev/video5 and an output - for example /dev/video6. Since version 2.9 Motion has had its own webserver so this usage is no longer very relevant.

Originally the video4linux pipe was used as an interface between Motion and a Webcam server. You can also choose to see the 'motion' type images where you see the pixels that are changing - live. What you see is not the live camera stream but the exact same picture that motion uses for detecting motion and the same pictures that are saved/streamed. This way an additional program such as Camstream, Xawtv, a video stream server etc can watch the signal from a camera that motion uses already. But motion is made to be able to feed a video signal to the video loopback device. When motion is using a camera - no other program can access the same camera. Only one program can access a video device at a time. You may now ask: 'What do I need that for?'. The purpose of this is to create a standard video4linux type video device that other programs can then use. The module simply takes anything that comes on its input and send it out at the output. The video4linux device is a Kernel module which installs itself as a video pipe. You can find the source and a brief description at the video4linux loopback device web page.

#Loopback device driver

The video4linux driver is written by the same author that first created Motion. Unfortunately my nerd-fu starts to run thin here and I simply scoured the web until I found an ~/.asoundrc that works for my setup ( source): pcm.You can use this driver for looking at motion in realtime. It is possible to duplicate the main output to the loopback device. Duplicate master output to loopback device -up.

The loopback device works, but we won't be able to hear anything because sound goes only there, and not to the main output anymore. We will create a virtual loopback card 1. We assume a single run-of-the-mill Intel sound card, mapped as card 0. This was written & tested on an Archlinux system, but I believe it applies to most Linux/ALSA systems.

Duplicate master output to loopback device.