Using an External Usb Camera in Android

Question

Could somebody give me an instruction, how to use an external camera in android app. My app need to use front/back and external cameras but there is no official external camera API I found some issues about this, but they don't have a full answer on how to implement this functionality and especially for android API 21+ versions. As I understand, Camera2 API supports external camera and I can use this API for displaying preview from usb-camera, but most of devices can not see connected external camera. How can I fix this and how can I get this camera id when receive cameras list

String[] cameraList = manager.getCameraIdList();

About "devices can not see usb-camera" I find a few answers : USB camera can not be connected to Android in general, because Android4.0 USB host function has some problems about isochronous transfer..

http://www.infinitegra.co.jp/en/solution/AndroidUsbCam.htm

and maby camera does not getting power from usb-port

https://stackoverflow.com/a/8986688/5219832

But it is written about the old camera API and I don't know, for example, how to get power from usb-port.

Please give me an answer for correctly working with external camera

what do you mean by _external camera_ ? any apps that opens camera like retrica, photo editor?? — SweetWisher ツ, Jun 17 '16 at 09:03
I think he meant to say an external usb camera that you plug into your Android — Omar Aflak, Jun 17 '16 at 09:10
have you solved your issue, i am stuck with same issue, i hope you will transfer knowledge to me. — Aditay Kaushal, Jun 08 '17 at 07:10
I also have the same issue. if you know please help me with this. Thanks! — Priya, Feb 07 '22 at 06:34

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Jun 18 '16 at 00:44

There's no Android-wide support for external USB cameras.

Some manufacturers have built in support for their own Android devices, but there's no guarantee that a particular Android device will support a webcam over the standard camera APIs.

If you need this feature, you'll need to find which devices support it, and how.

Some applications use the Android USB APIs to implement support for webcams, so that any device that supports USB host mode will work for those applications. But that won't make the cameras visible to other applications through the standard APIs.

Using an External Usb Camera in Android

1 Answers1