Integrated Chicony uvcvideo Webcam stopped working Ubuntu [and solution] - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: edy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 30, 2020, 04:09:28 pm
content: Hi folks,So this problem has been driving me nuts for a year or two ever since I gave my daughter an older ASUS laptop (X550CA). It's a fairly good machine, I put in a 256 GB SSD and installed Ubuntu Studio and she has been using it for school work and especially now due to COVID she is on webcam Zoom with the classroom.Anyways, what happened was the webcam started to get "flakey". She would be in the middle of a Zoom session with school and all of a sudden the camera would go dead. So I'd try a reboot, sometimes it would launch again, sometimes not. Whenever we tried to start up the webcam the little white LED light next to it would turn on briefly, then turn off and no signal (software would complain not able to initialize or something). As well, Ubuntu would load up another instance of /dev/video and no matter what I did to try and check the device driver setup, it wouldn't fix the problem.... modprobe, lshw, upgrading, changing uvcvideo configuration, forcing detect, removing and reinstalling, etc... nothing worked.Then I would remove the battery, let the machine go completely dead for a while and then start it up again, and behold the webcam would work again for a while. Then last week again webcam went dead in the middle of her Zoom session.So I was ready to give up on Ubuntu Studio, thinking it is a software issue maybe caused by some upgrade. I booted off a few "Live" USB keys containing several versions of Linux (Mint, UbuntuStudio, Slax, etc) and none of them detected the webcam properly. I was ready to even wipe and install Windows 10 (as a last resort) to see if it would solve the webcam issue. I was a bit perplexed why even fresh unadulterated "Live" USB keys booting into fresh Linux distros which I had successfully used the webcam with before *still* didn't load up the webcam. That made no sense. At this point I decided it was a HARDWARE ISSUE because the software/BIOS all checked out ok.I popped open the machine, looked at the motherboard, disconnected all cables and took it out, inspected everything and then popped it back in. All looked ok, so next I went for the screen and webcam itself. I opened it up and everything looked ok... until I noticed the damn cable that goes into the webcam was not seated all the way!!!It was snug but definitely had another 1mm it could be pushed in, and there was almost NO SLACK in the cable at all but I managed to use a fingernail to grab an edge of the connector and force it in FULLY!In case any of you are wondering, the camera assembly looks something like this and you can see that long cable that runs from the webcam to the motherboard:I figure what may have happened is as the laptop is carried around or the screen is opened/closed, the cable eventually loosens up from the port on the webcam assembly board, just enough to lose a contact or two. That's why the power light seems to have still been going on and off. What I can't explain is why sometimes it would work on reboot, and why removing the battery and re-installing did it... Unless it was just a fluke that I moved the laptop around, upside-down, jiggled the screen or otherwise and it would get it to work again. That is what was driving me nuts, because it didn't seem to be purely a loose cable but it was just *barely* giving these inconsistent results.Unfortunately opening up the laptop wasn't without consequences (although minor)... some of those stupid little plastic "tabs" that pretty much snap the case together (both main body as well as screen) ended up breaking off. No matter how careful I was with a plastic "spudger" to try not to break them. There are still enough there that I was able to snap everything back together ok and the screws are holding it back together but it annoyed me at how brittle the plastic was. However, nobody will notice this as functionally everything is more or less fine and cosmetically you can't really see the any changes.I just wanted to share this story because I noticed quite a few people complaining of non-working integrated laptop webcams in many Linux forums when I was searching for a solution to my problem. While some found solutions, many did not... and since it was sporadic and behaving almost like a software glitch it pays to check the hardware.