2025-05-25 iPhone, GoPro, tears
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I have a GoPro which I used to take a nice 6s video of a young whale
when we went to the Maledives in 2024.

I also took hours of not so important video. There is, of course, an
iPhone app for the GoPro. It currently has 45 GB of videos on it. I
can't access the iPhone from my wife's Mac without upgrading it.

So I use my Linux Laptop to connect to the phone. And my wife's Mac is
mounted via wifi, and it has the external, encrypted hard disk where
the images and videos should go. Current transfer speed is 1.3 MB/sec.

Sometimes I do feel the bars of the golden cage. 😔

And there so many random errors. Or a laptop that falls asleep. Or a
duplicate filename. These things always interrupt the process and wait
for user input.

This is where the tears come in.

#GoPro

2025-05-27. I don’t remember why I didn’t use the SD card directly.
Perhaps the file formats need converting? Perhaps my wife’s Mac
doesn’t have a working card reader?

Standard formats. Standard connectors.

2025-09-13. I wanted to use the GoPro as a webcam. I installed the
shell script from Use your GoPro as a webcam on Linux (without
additional hardware). That requires v4l2loopback. In order to
install this under Debian:

    sudo apt install linux-headers-amd64 v4l2loopback-dkms

You need the headers otherwise DKMS will not build the module!

If you got the order wrong, you can trigger it again:

    sudo dpkg-reconfigure v4l2loopback-dkms

If it works:

    sudo modprobe v4l2loopback

Check it:

    sudo lsmod|grep v4l2loopback

Oh, and a firmware upgrade of the camera was also required!

But then, after a lot of back and forth, I don't know how, finally USB
connected and it switched to webcam mode, and the following worked:

    sudo gopro webcam --fov=narrow --resolution=480 --auto-start --non-interactive

And then I need to remember to restart Firefox so that it discovers
the new cam. If everything works, then "enabling" a camera in a web
app like Galène pops up a permission form for camera and microphone
and that point I can choose between the two cameras: the one built
into the laptop and 'gopro'. If I cannot pick a camera at that moment,
then the browser didn't recognize it.

I guess it worked! Now all I need is a tripod. For now, bits of
cardboard will have to do for my new dice cam.