Solved MS Teams with camera?

zirias@

zirias@

Developer
Anyone here got Teams to work with a webcam? If so, which browser and what was necessary to configure?

I just got some camera from work, a Logitech model, it was instantly detected by webcamd and just works, so far so good ... but no luck with Teams :mad:

What I tried so far:
  • Chromium seems to be the only native browser on FreeBSD that can run Teams correctly with all features. Unfortunately, it can't access the camera. When it tries, the camera gets active, but there's no picture ... and it stays active, no matter what, and no other application can use it until I re-plug it...
  • Firefox has some issues with Teams, but can access the camera just fine. But: It doesn't succeed delivering the video to others in the call, they just see "black"
  • Falkon *seems* to work at a first glance. But then, entering a call, it seems to behave unidirectional: Either I can hear others, or others can hear me, never both
  • I finally tried installing some Ubuntu chroot and running Google Chrome in it. Also to no avail. It fails to enter any Teams call ....
What. The. F**k.

So far, I blame this Javascript abomination called Teams. Still, does anyone have some tips what to try? Thanks a lot!
 
Are you talking about in-browser or a teams application?

My current status is that the webcam only works in Firefox (not Chromium, not Linux-Chrome) and my microphone doesn't work at all. The mic is Tiger Lake, so that is to be expected. The nasty thing, however, is that the browsers only consider the built-in audio. The USB sound device I want to use for a mic works in FreeBSD outside the browsers, but is not offered as a choice in the browser.
 
If I recall I could only get Firefox to work with Teams and Webcam (ironically).

Modify the user-agent to bypass Microsoft's artificial "Chrome check" and Teams should work with the webcam (via webcamd). At least it did a month or two ago. Though it was a little fragile.
 
kpedersen that's how far I got, yes. Unfortunately, Firefox does not succeed to actually send my camera picture (the others see just plain black). And yes, Chromium can't access the camera. :rolleyes:
 
While the above bug may be related. This is a current bug (271048) with the current Chromium 112, which was apparently just fixed if one sees the last comments. Haven't had a chance to check this myself yet. May have to wait for the next package build update.
 
Wow awesome! My poudriere just builds a state of the tree that already has 113 ... and now I *do* have hope :cool:
 
The text below is my experience with video conferencing using the browser (Chromium/Firefox) on FreeBSD.

An observation is that Firefox works better on FreeBSD than Chromium for video conferencing in recent years.
With Chromium, the video (image) usually works, but with the audio there is almost always a problem that you can't hear the other person or vice versa, so it doesn't work bidirectionally.

Jitsi Meet has always worked in recent years and with good audio and video.

I could also always get Zoom and Google Meet to work fine in Firefox.

A few years ago you could still use MS Teams via Firefox, but at a certain point you could no longer open the links via Firefox and it simply gave an error message that Firefox is no longer supported by Teams.

It seems you don't realize this, but Microsoft has simply decided that Firefox users will no longer use Teams.

learn.microsoft.com

Get clients for Microsoft Teams - Microsoft Teams

Learn how to install the various clients available for classic Microsoft Teams on PCs, Macs, and mobile devices.
learn.microsoft.com
Firefox, the latest version plus two previous versionsNot supportedMeetings are supported only if the meeting includes PSTN coordinates. To attend a meeting on Firefox without PSTN coordinates, users must download the Teams desktop client.

Video: Not supported

Sharing: Incoming sharing only (no outgoing)
 
cracauer@ said:
Does teams have a windows client that we could try in Wine?
Click to expand...
It does. It's an electron app. Well, maybe it works in Wine?

Right now, my hopes are in the recently committed Chromium patch that should fix webcam access. After all, Teams seems to run correctly in Chromium (and, as it seems, only in Chromium ....)
 
Nice information... right now, I have to make do with a dedicated Windows device for videoconferencing, and copy-pasting of stuff from an SSH connection. :)
 
Really not funny any more ... in Chromium-113, camera access is fixed indeed. But now, Teams fails to use my microphone. Although the microphone works perfectly on other websites .... :mad:
 
If Chromium is built with the default settings, it is using SNDIO. Then, it will only pick up the microphone that is on the default_unit. This works fine if you have a USB-headphone with microphone, but if you have a different input than your output, you have to use something like virtual_oss to mix them together. This does work and is my current solution when I have a USB microphone and a different speaker.

In another thread, HPS talked about recompiling with ALSA and that working better than SNDIO. I haven't had a chance to really sit down and try that though. With ALSA, you should be able to select your output at least.

Hope this helps. Teams is a real bear to get working from time to time, and updates (either to Teams or Chromium) always feel iffy. I understand why Microsoft just decided to package the whole thing as an electron package to control it all, but it makes the whole experience very annoying.
 
twschulz see above, the problem doesn't seem to be Chromium. Yes, I'm using it with sndio, I configured my sndiod a long time ago and it's working fine. I could also successfully use a microphone testing site in the new Chromium version. It's really just Teams that suddenly has yet another issue :rolleyes:
 
Almost all possible compatibility problems can be solved very easily by installing a Linux distro on a USB 2.0/3.0 stick.

Since a USB stick usually has slightly less IOPS, it is best to choose a distro that boots relatively quickly, such as Devuan, Void Linux, Clear Linux, Artix Linux, MX Linux and mageia. I permanently installed all these distros on a USB stick and it worked fine every time.

In special situations like MS Teams video conferences, you can just plug the USB into your PC and your compatibility problem will be solved very easily. All of the above distributions support Flatpak, and teams-for-linux is a package available on Flathub.

Void Linux and Artix Linux are perhaps best suited for this purpose as XBPS and pacman are lightning fast, which is even more noticeable if you use a USB stick as storage medium.
 
zirias@ Sorry didn't see that. Yes, I have had Teams updates that cause strange microphone issues. For example, once I had some sort of automatic gain control that was reducing my volume after a second or two. It was eventually fixed in Teams, but I had to use a "Diasble Automatic Gain Control" extension to keep it from the microphone volume being reduced.

Good luck!
 
Voltaire that's unfortunately not a good option for me as I need quite a lot of other tooling to be able to work from home...

twschulz well thanks. I guess I have to wait for some Teams update to fix that latest foo ... until then, I have to use my mobile (Teams on Android can join the same call) to have working audio :rolleyes:
 
Jose said:
We managed to kill a move from Zoom to Teams at work. I'm so glad now. (Not trying to rub it in. I'm sincerely relieved!)
Click to expand...
at my $JOB, we use both... so I basically try to stay on top of it, keep it up to date, etc. It's my work computer, I get paid to use the company-provided tools, might as well keep the stuff in good shape and usable. 🤷‍♂️
 
It's not that I didn't try that was well. Google Chrome (the Linux binary) seems to have no problems at all accessing both my camera and microphone, but can't connect any call in Teams. :rolleyes:

And then, I'm really reluctant to pull in Poetterware as right now, my Chromium using sndio can use my microphone, just not with Teams any more. :(
 
Well, Teams in Chromium 113.x not being able to get sound from the microphone (although other websites can), this problem persists, even with the latest port upgrade, even when building with ALSA instead of SNDIO ....

I don't have words (acceptable for use in public) to describe what I think about "Teams" in general 😏.

At least, I have a weird workaround, that indeed works. I join Teams calls in Firefox, without camera (which is partially broken there, I see the picture locally, but everyone else just sees black). If I need to show myself in a call, I join the same call with Chromium, completely disabling audio, so this one just adds the camera. 🤯
 
An "interesting" update on the issue:

Yesterday, I discovered I can have a fully working teams (although with some older UI, but that was better anyways) using chromium, but faking the user-agent to firefox 🤯

At least it worked so far in some test meeting. Let's see whether this will be reliable on some actual meetings.

So, current situation for MS Teams:
  • Chromium: All working except microphone is silent
  • Firefox: Seems to work, but camera crashes the meeting connection
  • Chromium disguised as Firefox: 👍
 
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