As much as I appreciate the work done to make the CL Eye Driver,  some strange decisions have dampened my enthusiasm.

The CL-Eye DirectShow driver by default only permits the camera to function as a standard 30fps webcam which strikes me as being counterproductive. The “advanced mode” possible with the cleye.config file is very obscure and not user friendly. If the camera’s full capabilities must be relegated to an advanced mode that the user is required to manually enable, it would be much more convenient to add it as a checkbox option to the stream property page.

The CL-Eye Driver Installer should make it absolutely clear it is a downloader that requires internet access, the first I knew about it was when my firewall prompted if I should let the installer phone home, I blocked it thinking it wasn’t necessary but then it couldn’t install. The online requirement for a simple driver installation is inconvenient and doesn’t seem justified.

It would be extremely useful for the DirectShow driver to have programmatic exposure control exposed through the IAMCameraControl interface. Many ordinary webcams have this ability and it would seem fundamental for an advanced camera like the Eye.

The driver is a little odd in that it allows you to select a camera when no camera is present and the property page is only enabled during a video stream.

Hey MindsEye,

It is best for advance usage to use the CL Eye SDK as it provides much more broad access to the data. We support DirectShow to get stable support accross a wide variety of applications (Flash, Skype, AIM etc…) but we are aware of the benefits of extending our DirectShow API and have it on our mind. As for the stand alone downloaded we find its best to use this as it provides a consistent deployment but again if you are a advance user you can simple copy the driver files after installation.

Thanks,
CL Support

Just another odd thing I want to point out.

Most cameras let you tinker with the driver’s property page from different applications at the same time, for example I can start a video stream with Skype and then start, say, VirtualDub and modify the camera properties from there. The CL-Eye DirectShow driver seems to limit control to the same thread that is receiving the camera stream. So even within the same application if you have no control over those threads (using a third party video API for example) then you can’t access the camera property pages.