Android using front facing camera to take a picture

Question

This is my first time using a camera. I\'ve read a lot of examples and also the documentation, so I tried to make my own class to take pictures with the front facing camera.

Answer 1

Take a look at this question for info and code how to do it: Taking pictures with camera on Android programmatically

The code you used here is not wrong, but this one works.

If you want to take a pic without the user being shown a preview, take a look at this code: https://github.com/aporter/coursera-android/blob/master/Examples/AudioVideoCamera/src/course/examples/AudioVideo/Camera/AudioVideoCameraActivity.java

You need to get rid of the SurfaceView that shows the user the preview.

Answer 2

I solved the problem. After reading some other posts and tutorials seems like that the camera needs a "dummy" surface to preview, even if we don't want the preview to be shown.

Here's my final code in case anyone needs it. Notice that by "hasCamera" I mean a front facing camera:

   public class CameraController {

    private Context context;

    private boolean hasCamera;

    private Camera camera;
    private int cameraId;

    public CameraController(Context c){
        context = c.getApplicationContext();

        if(context.getPackageManager().hasSystemFeature(PackageManager.FEATURE_CAMERA)){
            cameraId = getFrontCameraId();

            if(cameraId != -1){
                hasCamera = true;
            }else{
                hasCamera = false;
            }
        }else{
            hasCamera = false;
        }
    }

    public boolean hasCamera(){
        return hasCamera;
    }

    public void getCameraInstance(){
        camera = null;

        if(hasCamera){
            try{
                camera = Camera.open(cameraId);
                prepareCamera();
            }
            catch(Exception e){
                hasCamera = false;
            }
        }
    }

    public void takePicture(){
        if(hasCamera){
            camera.takePicture(null,null,mPicture);
        }
    }

    public void releaseCamera(){
        if(camera != null){
            camera.stopPreview();
            camera.release();
            camera = null;
        }
    }

    private int getFrontCameraId(){
        int camId = -1;
        int numberOfCameras = Camera.getNumberOfCameras();
        CameraInfo ci = new CameraInfo();

        for(int i = 0;i < numberOfCameras;i++){
            Camera.getCameraInfo(i,ci);
            if(ci.facing == CameraInfo.CAMERA_FACING_FRONT){
                camId = i;
            }
        }

        return camId;
    }

    private void prepareCamera(){
        SurfaceView view = new SurfaceView(context);

        try{
            camera.setPreviewDisplay(view.getHolder());
        }catch(IOException e){
            throw new RuntimeException(e);
        }

        camera.startPreview();

        Camera.Parameters params = camera.getParameters();
        params.setJpegQuality(100);

        camera.setParameters(params);  
    }

    private PictureCallback mPicture = new PictureCallback(){
        @Override
        public void onPictureTaken(byte[] data, Camera camera){
            File pictureFile = getOutputMediaFile();

            if(pictureFile == null){
                Log.d("TEST", "Error creating media file, check storage permissions");
                return;
            }

            try{
                Log.d("TEST","File created");
                FileOutputStream fos = new FileOutputStream(pictureFile);
                fos.write(data);
                fos.close();
            }catch(FileNotFoundException e){
                Log.d("TEST","File not found: "+e.getMessage());
            } catch (IOException e){
                Log.d("TEST","Error accessing file: "+e.getMessage());
            }
        }
    };

    private File getOutputMediaFile(){
        // To be safe, you should check that the SDCard is mounted
        // using Environment.getExternalStorageState() before doing this.

        File mediaStorageDir = new File(Environment.getExternalStoragePublicDirectory(Environment.DIRECTORY_PICTURES),"MyCameraApp");

        // This location works best if you want the created images to be shared
        // between applications and persist after your app has been uninstalled.

        // Create the storage directory if it does not exist
        if(!mediaStorageDir.exists()){
            if(!mediaStorageDir.mkdirs()){
                return null;
            }
        }

        // Create a media file name
        String timeStamp = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyyMMdd_HHmmss").format(new Date());

        File mediaFile;
        mediaFile = new File(mediaStorageDir.getPath()+File.separator+"IMG_"+timeStamp+".jpg");

        return mediaFile;
    }
}