ARToolkit problems with Ubuntu 9.10

In our project we have the ARToolkit installed on several machines, and not all machines have problems with the V4L version of the toolkit, so you could try out the V4L version before resorting to the GStreamer version.

If you encounter the following error: “error: acquireing channel(0) info” it probably means you should configure the ARToolkit for GStreamer. Apparently this is due to some problems using V4L2 libraries, which is not supported by ARToolkit.
To do this you should re-run configure and make in the root of the ARToolkit to rebuild the toolkit. It is important to remember to clean the previous installation before reconfiguring. This can be done by running “make clean” in the root folder of the toolkit.
When configuring select option 5 “GStreamer” and choose the rest of the options that are appropriate for your system. After compilation you should be able to run the “simpleTest” demo.

If the default options does not work with the simpleTest example, it might be necessary to specify some options before running the example. Try running the following command to set options for ARVideo.

export ARTOOLKIT_CONFIG="v4l2src device=/dev/video0 use-fixed-fps=false ! ffmpegcolorspace ! capsfilter caps=video/x-raw-rgb,bpp=24 ! identity name=artoolkit ! fakesink"

Remember to change the device string to point to right camera source.