Patent ID: 7690004

Claim:
In an electronic device a method for accessing an image acquisition device associated with the electronic device independently of an interface protocol of the image acquisition device, the method comprising: receiving a request to access the image acquisition device, the request specifying a format for a response from the image acquisition device; establishing a communication channel with a hardware interface of the image acquisition device, the communication channel operating independently of the interface protocol of the image acquisition device wherein establishing the communication channel comprises: communicating with an interface of the image acquisition device to establish communication therewith; and establishing one or more communication procedures for communication with the image acquisition device, the communication procedures providing instructions on how data transfers are managed across the communication channel, wherein the one or more communication procedures provides instructions for at least one of: logging data to file, buffering data received from the image acquisition device, configuring selected properties associated with the image acquisition device, generating events, and translating error codes from the image acquisition device; configuring properties of the image acquisition device supported independently of the interface protocol of the image acquisition device and accessing a feature of the image acquisition device using the communication channel to receive the response in the specified format, where configuring the properties of the image acquisition device further comprises specifying a color space for images acquired by the image acquisition device.