Camera on Android Eclipse emulator:

Question

I don\'t have an embedded camera in the lid of my notebook. I\'d be hooking up through an external USB camera.

The emulator runtime can pick this up right? I\'ll g

Answer 1

From the android documentation:

Emulator Limitations

In this release, the limitations of the emulator include:

...

No support for camera/video capture

...

In other words, no, you cannot access or preview the camera in the emulator.

Answer 2

In the current release of the emulator (Ice Cream Sandwich, API14;Linux), web camera support is available. Google's documentation and most answers available on the web do not yet reflect this. The emulator itself does:

emulator -help
...
-fake-camera <mode>      set fake camera emulation mode
-webcam name=<name>[,dir=&lt;direction&gt;] setup web camera emulation
...
emulator -help-all

and further:

help for option -fake_camera

Use -fake-camera <mode> to control fake camera emulation. Valid values for <mode> are:

off   -> disable fake camera emulation
back  -> fake camera is facing back
front -> fake camera is facing front

help for option -webcam

• -webcam off to disable web camera emulation.
• -webcam list to list web cameras available for emulation.

• -webcam name=[,dir=<direction>] to setup parameters for web camera emulation.

  • <name> platform-independent name identifying emulated camera device.

  • <direction> defines direction the camera is facing. Valid values are:

    • front -> emulate camera as facing front

    • back -> emulate camera as facing back

      Default direction value for emulated web camera is 'front'

Answer 3

Afaik the emulator wont show a realtime camera regardless.

If you need a live camera-source to use in your own app for debugging, there is a sollution at http://www.tomgibara.com/android/camera-source

Updated for newer android versions: http://www.inter-fuser.com/2009/09/live-camera-preview-in-android-emulator.html

Answer 4

Time to upgrade your ADK!

As of Android SDK version 14, the emulator supports webcams to simulate a camera:

General notes - Added webcam support to Android 4.0 or later platforms to emulate rear-facing cameras when one webcam is present, and to emulate both rear-facing and front-facing cameras when two webcams are present. Webcam suport is for Windows and Linux only. Mac support will come in a later release.

from: Android SDK Tools, SDK Tools, Revision 14

It works! I've tried this myself.