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Digikam Plugin API
If you plan on developing plugins for Digikam, here's the API for it.
HowTo
FAQ

Q: I just installed Digikam and all I see is the help menu. Whats wrong?

Either you are installing from source or installing an rpm which was not meant to be used with version of the linux distribution you are using. The problem is that the digiKam has not been installed in the same location as the rest of KDE and so cannot find a file called digikamui.rc which it uses to build the menubar and toolbar.
Fortunately there's an easy fix.
  • Fire up a console and enter: 
    kde-config --path data
    In my case it comes up with: /home/renchi/.kde/share/apps/:/usr/share/apps/
  • Choose one of the above two paths. Out here we would choose the second path /usr/share/apps/ so that any user on the system can use digiKam
  • Find the file digikamui.rc which has been installed by your current digikam installation. Most likely its either in /usr/local/share/apps/digikam or /opt/kde3/share/apps/digikam
  • Now make a directory called digikam in the above chosen directory and copy tht file digikamui.rc to it
  • Fire up digiKam and enjoy!!

Q: My Camera is not in the list of supported cameras in digiKam. Can you add drivers for my camera?

Only if you pay me. :)

Seriously, digiKam doesn't included any camera drivers with it. It makes use of gphoto2 to do camera operations. If you camera is not in the supported list, i would recommend doing some searching around. Many of the new cameras actually provide a USB MassStorage Device Interface, so that you can access the camera like a hard disk. (See, the FAQ about using a USB MassStorage Camera with digiKam).

If you have still have no luck, i would recommend contacting the gphoto2 people.

Q: I have a USB Mass Storage Camera. How do I use it with digiKam?

The Easy Way!

If you have a relatively modern Linux distribution that is pre-configured to work with USB Mass Storage Devices, there's nothing you need to set up!. It should be truly "plug and play":
  • Plug your device in to the USB slot
  • It will be automatically detected by the kernel, and an appropriate entry in /etc/fstab will be added automatically.
  • The device will be mounted under /mnt/flash or /mnt/camera
  • Run digikam setup and add a USB MassStorage Camera. Set the path to the above path, where the camera is mounted.

Manual Setup

If you're running a Linux distribution that doesn't set up USB Mass Storage devices automatically, here are the steps you need to follow:
  • Most users using a recent Linux Distribution can skip this step.
    Configure the Linux Kernel:
    • Add SCSI Support
      • SCSI Support (CONFIG_SCSI)
      • SCSI IDE Support (CONFIG_BLK_DEV_IDESCSI)
      • SCSI disk support (CONFIG_BLK_DEV_SD)
      • SCSI generic support (CONFIG_CHR_DEV_SG)
    • Add USB Support
      • Support for USB (CONFIG_USB)
      • USB drivers. One or more of: ECHI HCD (CONFIG_USB_EHCI_HCD), UHCI (CONFIG_USB_UHCI), OHCI (CONFIG_USB_OHCI)
      • Preliminary USB device file system (CONFIG_USB_DEVICEFS)
      • USB Mass Storage support (CONFIG_USB_STORAGE)
  • Load the required kernel modules:
    modprobe ide-scsi sd_mod sg vfat
    modprobe usb-ohci (or usb-uhci depending on your usb bus)
    modprobe usb-storage (or usb-uhci depending on your usb bus)
  • Plug in your USB device. You should see your device listed in /proc/bus/usb/devices. If not, you need to fix the kernel or check your cabling.
  • Use the sg3-utils package to determine the device name of your USB Mass Storage Device:
    • Install the sg3-utils package (e.g. on Debian, Lindows: apt-get install sg3-utils)
    • Connect the camera and turn it onto the picture display mode
    • List your raw SCSI devices by running sg_scan -i. The output will look something like this:
      /dev/sg0: scsi0 channel=0 id=0 lun=0 [em] type=5
      _NEC CD-ROM CD-3002A C000 [wide=0 sync=0 cmdq=0 sftre=0 pq=0x0]
      /dev/sg1: scsi1 channel=0 id=0 lun=0 [em] type=0
      OLYMPUS C-120/D-380 1.00 [wide=0 sync=0 cmdq=0 sftre=0 pq=0x0]
    • This tells me that I have 2 SCSI devices on my system: My CD drive on /dev/sg0, and a OLYMPUS D-380 Camera on /dev/sg1
    • Determine the real SCSI device associated with your USB Mass Storage Device with sg_map. The output looks like:
      /dev/sg0 /dev/sr0
      /dev/sg1 /dev/sda
    • Now we can match the results of these last two steps. For example the Olympus camera is on the /dev/sda device.
    • In most cases, USB Mass Storage Devices will only have one partition on them, so we can safely assume that the final, mountable device is /dev/sda1 (the first partition on /dev/sda).
    • Make a directory where you can mount the camera:
      mkdir /mnt/camera; chmod 666 /mnt/camera
    • Try mounting the camera now:
      mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 /mnt/camera
    • If no errors show up, then you have performed all the steps correctly. To verify everything is right, point you file manager to /mnt/camera and you should be able to see the folder/pictures on the camera
  • Add an entry to /etc/fstab for the mount point:
    /dev/sda1   /mnt/camera   auto   defaults,user,noauto   0 0
  • Now it's ready to go. Any user can mount the device: mount /mnt/camera
  • Make sure you unmount it before taking the card out or unplugging it: umount /mnt/camera
  • Run digikam setup and add a USB MassStorage Camera. Set the path to the above path, where the camera is mounted.