List available cameras OpenCV/Python

Question

I have multiple webcams connected to my PC and I would like to select one camera based on its info (name, resolution etc.). Is there a way to list all the cameras available

Answer 1

The answer is negative. OpenCV doesn't have a method for listing the available video capture devices on your system. If you look at the code you see how currently OpenCV handles invalid device indices that don't exist. For instance for MacOS here is the code:

if ( cameraNum < 0 || devices.count <= NSUInteger(cameraNum) ) {
    fprintf(stderr, "OpenCV: out device of bound (0-%ld): %d\n", devices.count-1, cameraNum);
    [localpool drain];
    return 0;
}

You see devices.count returns the number of available devices but OpenCV doesn't have a method to return that to the user.

The relevant code for Windows is here:

if ((unsigned)m_deviceID >= m_devices.Get()->Size)
{
    OutputDebugStringA("Video::initGrabber - no video device found\n");
    return false;
}

Again there is no function for returning m_devices.Get()->Size to the user. The Linux code is a bit more complex.

If you're building OpenCV from code you could add a function that returns the number of available devices. Or even better submit a pull request to OpenCV with your patch.

Answer 2

To answer the title of your question, you can use a while loop:

import cv2


def list_ports():
"""
Test the ports and returns a tuple with the available ports and the ones that are working.
"""
    is_working = True
    dev_port = 0
    working_ports = []
    available_ports = []
    while is_working:
        camera = cv2.VideoCapture(dev_port)
        if not camera.isOpened():
            is_working = False
            print("Port %s is not working." %dev_port)
        else:
            is_reading, img = camera.read()
            w = camera.get(3)
            h = camera.get(4)
            if is_reading:
                print("Port %s is working and reads images (%s x %s)" %(dev_port,h,w))
                working_ports.append(dev_port)
            else:
                print("Port %s for camera ( %s x %s) is present but does not reads." %(dev_port,h,w))
                available_ports.append(dev_port)
        dev_port +=1
    return available_ports,working_ports

It's a quite easy solution to implement on your code.