Enable webcam in android emulator

Question

I am new to Android development. I am using Android 4.x SDK. I can't enable webcam in the Android emulator. Can anyone tell me how to enable it? Thanks!

Madrid

@Tim you can use a camera on the emulator. This is a feature that was added to the Android SDK. However, I've never used it myself. – Gesner

This answer probably has what you're looking for: https://mcmap.net/q/244480/-camera-on-android-eclipse-emulator – Gesner

Answer 1

There is a way to get this working use the Android Virtual Device Manager. You need to edit your AVD so that in the hardware section either "Configures camera facing front" or "Configures camera facing back" are available. One, but not both, of the values for these properties should be set to "webcam0" (or whatever is available). Then start your virtual device and use your webcam as an emulated camera.

If you have both properties set to "webcam0" then you'll get a warning when you start up the virtual device and the front/back control won't be available in the camera app.

Gesner

I am setting "Configures camera facing front: webcam0". But if I check the front camera available in emulator, it returns false. Here the frontcam returns false and rearCam returns true.(i.e) PackageManager pm = getPackageManager(); frontCam = pm.hasSystemFeature("android.hardware.camera.front"); rearCam = pm.hasSystemFeature(PackageManager.FEATURE_CAMERA); What may be the problem? – Paolapaolina

@Paolapaolina I don't know what the problem might be. Tell us more about your AVD settings (target, CPU/ABI, etc.). – Gesner

@Gesner thanks for the reply. I have attached my AVD screenshots in the following post : #15523186 – Paolapaolina

I had webcam0 set for front and back which caused the issue. I set the back to webcam0 only and it worked. thanks emulator: WARNING: Camera name 'webcam0' is not found in the list of connected cameras. Use '-webcam-list' emulator option to obtain the list of connected camera names. – Fatma

Answer 2

Use emulator help to explore the available options

$ emulator -help 2>&1 | grep cam
    -camera-back <mode>            set emulation mode for a camera facing back
    -camera-front <mode>           set emulation mode for a camera facing front
    -webcam-list                   lists web cameras available for emulation

and for example, use -webcam-list to list the recognized cameras

$ emulator -webcam-list @4.1
List of web cameras connected to the computer:
 Camera 'webcam0' is connected to device '/dev/video0' on channel 0 using pixel format 'YUYV'

to see the emulation options for cameras

$ emulator -camera-front help @4.1
emulator: ERROR: Invalid value for -camera-front <mode> parameter: help
Valid values are: 'emulated', 'webcam<N>', or 'none'

Purl

I got it working using the available camera in my avd config.ini file, lines: hw.camera.back=webcam0 hw.camera.front=none – Ari

Answer 3

open the AVD manager in the android studio and open "edit this AVD" and after that open "show advanced settings", in the camera section, change it to the webcam as it shows in the below screenshot.

Habitat