The Pixxo USB WebCam, model A-MW2130, has a separate infrared filter that is very easy to remove. You just unscrew the outer case, unscrew the lens, and pop out the square filter piece. It looks kind of like the one in this demo.

The AW-M2130 works fine under linux with v4l2. Here are the controls:

% v4lctl -c /dev/video1 list
attribute  | type   | current | default | comment
-----------+--------+---------+---------+-------------------------------------
norm       | choice | (null)  | (null)  |
input      | choice | zc3xx   | zc3xx   | zc3xx
contrast   | int    |     128 |     128 | range is 0 => 256
Gamma      | int    |       4 |       4 | range is 1 => 6
Auto Gain  | bool   | on      | on      |
Light freq | choice | 50 Hz   | 50 Hz   | NoFliker 50 Hz 60 Hz
Sharpness  | int    |       2 |       2 | range is 0 => 3

The camera was $10 at Frys.

I have a headless box that isn't talking out its ethernet port. I wondered if it would network over usb. My Pre is on a NAT wifi network so I couldn't reach it directly.

1. Connect to pre with novaterm

root@palm-webos-device:/# ssh -f -N -n -R 9999:localhost:222 drewp@bigasterisk.com

2. On bigasterisk.com, ssh -p 9999 localhost

3. Unplug pre usb, take it to the computer for testing

4. On the new ssh connection, watch dmesg and ifconfig for action.

It might have been a bit easier to turn off pre wifi and ssh to it over the sprint network, although my connection would have been slower.

If you get firefox 3.1 and try to run it on a 64-bit ubuntu hardy install, you'll probably get this failure:

./firefox-bin: error while loading shared libraries: libdbus-glib-1.so.2: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

1. Install 'ia32-libs' with "sudo aptitude install ia32-libs" (or use the synaptic GUI)
   
2. Go get the i386 version of libdbus-glib and save the .deb file somewhere.
3. Run "file-roller /tmp/libdbus-glib-1-2_0.74-2_i386.deb".
4. Go into data.tar.gz -> . -> usr -> lib, and copy libdbus-glib-1.so.2.1.0 to /usr/lib32 (or right to your firefox 3.1 directory, if you want to avoid writing to /usr).
5. Run 'sudo ldconfig' to make the libdbus-glib-1.so symlink
   

Now you should be able to test firefox 3.1 and play some of the videos from here. The one called 'video embedded in svg' is impressive, although on my system I only got one video at a time and the audio sync drifted. See this screencast (or youtube) for what it should look like.

2009-09-02 Updated with comments from Krellan