How to fix “Fail to connect to camera service” exception in Android emulator

Question

I\'m getting a Fail to connect to camera service exception when I run my Android app in the emulator. I\'ve read the various existing posts but none have fixed this. It is

Answer 1

Isn't an permission on android 6.x?

http://developer.android.com/training/permissions/requesting.html

Answer 2

Using

if (ContextCompat.checkSelfPermission(getApplicationContext(), android.Manifest.permission.CAMERA) != PackageManager.PERMISSION_GRANTED) {
  ActivityCompat.requestPermissions(CodeScanner.this, new String[]{android.Manifest.permission.CAMERA}, 50);
}

worked for me

Answer 3

If you periodically got a white screen instead your view of camera - use:

private void releaseCameraAndPreview() {
        if (mCamera != null) {
            mCamera.setPreviewCallback(null);
            mCameraView.getHolder().removeCallback(mCameraView);
            mCamera.release();
            mCamera = null;
        }
    }

and put it here

try {
            releaseCameraAndPreview();
            mCamera = getCameraInstance();
        }...

and here

@Override
    protected void onPause() {
        super.onPause();
        releaseCameraAndPreview();
    }

Answer 4

From the Android Developers Docs:

Calling Camera.open() throws an exception if the camera is already in use by another application, so we wrap it in a try block.

Try wrapping that code in a try catch block like so:

try {
    releaseCameraAndPreview();
    if (camId == 0) {
        mCamera = Camera.open(Camera.CameraInfo.CAMERA_FACING_FRONT);
    }
    else {
        mCamera = Camera.open(Camera.CameraInfo.CAMERA_FACING_BACK);
    }
} catch (Exception e) {
    Log.e(getString(R.string.app_name), "failed to open Camera");
    e.printStackTrace();
}

Then add this function somewhere:

private void releaseCameraAndPreview() {
    myCameraPreview.setCamera(null);
    if (mCamera != null) {
        mCamera.release();
        mCamera = null;
    }
}

Answer 5

OP mentions this in his question, but my issue was I forgot to enable camera emulation in my AVD emulator settings:

Answer 6

If you are using surface View and using code like this`

 Observable.create(CameraUtils.getCameraOnSubscribe())
                    .subscribeOn(Schedulers.newThread())
                    .observeOn(AndroidSchedulers.mainThread())
                    .subscribe(camera -> {

                 mCamera = camera.open();
...    
}};

Then replace mCamera=camera;