Evening, gang.
Now; this was prompted by a query from @Geek3579 , in this thread from boof about a non-functional webcam:-
nilsonmorales povided a wee script which will let the user check to see if a webcam is functional.....then Geek3579 wanted to know if he could save that to a JPG file. I thought this had to be a typo - and said as much - BUT; it got me thinking.
I've created at least 2 utilities now which explore allowing the user to run, view AND record from multiple webcams.....using v4l2, and viewing/recording first with mPlayer, then later using ffmpeg (after some encouragement from greengeek).
However; I'd never attempted capturing "still" images - snapshots, if you like - with a webcam. I looked into doing this with ffmpeg.....and backed off, sharpish! While capturing video from a webcam has its own quirks, it seems relatively simple compared to capturing a still image. Apparently this would involve multiple ffmpeg modules, extracting either a single frame from a live feed OR creating some kind of "dummy feed" from at least two - if not three - other modules in combination together.....
Darned complicated, in other words. I decided to put ffmpeg on the back burner while I continued hunting around for summat a wee bit easier. It paid off, too, because a little while later I came across a blog extolling the virtues of a small command-line utility called fswebcam - expressly built for just this purpose - which is, it seems, available in the repos of most distros!
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I installed fswebcam, and had a "play" with it in the terminal. After some experimentation, it appeared to do exactly what was wanted, so.......I've cobbled together a GUI 'frontend' to make using it a bit easier (especially for the noobs & journeymen of the community), and constructed in my usual self-contained, portable format.
It's multi-arch; contains both arches of fswebcam, and both arches of yad (since an up-to-date version is required, and many Puppy users usually just run with whatever came OOTB.....which is often quite old). It auto-detects the architecture in use, and 'loads' the appropriate binaries for both fswebcam and yad. It's just over 3 MB in size, when unpacked, so won't do too much damage to anyone's 'save'!
It's also fairly self-explanatory in use; the only thing you DO need to know in advance are the resolutions which your webcam runs at, since this is the first thing you need to enter. Although it is possible to 'force' different resolutions, if your cam doesn't natively support them OOTB you end up with all sorts of 'blockiness' and 'pixelation', so it's best to use those your cam is happy with! 
(I can't include a drop-down for various resolutions here, unfortunately. Resolutions appear to vary greatly from one webcam to another; I have 4 of the things, and the only one that seems to be common to all is 640x480.......and I'm quite certain that somebody - at some point - will want to use a different resolution. Hence the reason for a manual "entry box"...)
One nice thing here is that every 'still' you take has a small, discreet time/date stamp along the bottom of the 'snapshot'. There's probably an option amongst the available 'switches' to remove it if not wanted, though personally I'm quite happy with this.
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If anybody's feeling masochistic enough to want to try this out ( ), you can find it at my MediaFire a/c, here:-
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/ks9ha4 ... m-portable
As always:-
Download
Unzip
Move it wherever you want, though as I always advise, outside the 'save' is better
Click to fire it up; this one's packed as a ROXapp, though by 'looking inside' you can find the usual MenuAdd/MenuRemove scripts for managing a Menu entry, should one be required
Hope it's useful for some of you!
Mike. 
