How to correctly check if a camera is available?

Question

I am using OpenCV to open and read from several webcams. It all works fine, but I cannot seem to find a way to know if a camera is available.

I tried this code (cam

Answer 1

Another solution, which is available in Linux is to use the /dev/videoX device in the VideoCapture() call. The devices are there when the cam is plugged in. Together with glob(), it is trivial to get all the cameras:

import cv2, glob

for camera in glob.glob("/dev/video?"):
    c = cv2.VideoCapture(camera)

Of course a check is needed on c using isOpened(), but you are sure you only scan the available cameras.