Declaring CameraCharactersitics in CameraX to check hardware level

Question

Having issues with manual camera/sensor control (AE + AWB off) with CameraX via the Camera2Interop.

I'm attempting to ensure my test device is capiable of manual control of SENSOR_SENSITIVITY. For when AE is set to off the image is way too dark, and when SENSOR_SENSITIVITY is at maximum it's better but still too dark and with noise. That is, without boosted SENSOR_SENSITIVITY I can only get an image by pointing directly at light bulb, so I'm assuming that when I boost SENSOR_SENSITIVITY there is no analog boost, and it's only digitally boosting the signal which gives it noise at maximum.

In attempting to find examples of testing my device's SENSOR_SENSITIVITY range I found this code:

// Returns true if the device supports the required hardware level, or better.
boolean isHardwareLevelSupported(CameraCharacteristics c, int requiredLevel) {
    final int[] sortedHwLevels = {
            CameraCharacteristics.INFO_SUPPORTED_HARDWARE_LEVEL_LEGACY,
            CameraCharacteristics.INFO_SUPPORTED_HARDWARE_LEVEL_EXTERNAL,
            CameraCharacteristics.INFO_SUPPORTED_HARDWARE_LEVEL_LIMITED,
            CameraCharacteristics.INFO_SUPPORTED_HARDWARE_LEVEL_FULL,
            CameraCharacteristics.INFO_SUPPORTED_HARDWARE_LEVEL_3
    };
    int deviceLevel = c.get(CameraCharacteristics.INFO_SUPPORTED_HARDWARE_LEVEL);

    Toast.makeText(this, deviceLevel, Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show();

    if (requiredLevel == deviceLevel) {
        return true;
    }

    for (int sortedlevel : sortedHwLevels) {
        if (sortedlevel == requiredLevel) {
            return true;
        } else if (sortedlevel == deviceLevel) {
            return false;
        }
    }
    return false; // Should never reach here
}

However, I'm having issues calling it. How do I declare CameraCharacteristics in the context of CameraX and for the purpose of this code? This was my attempt based on example code:

CameraManager manager = (CameraManager) this.getSystemService(Context.CAMERA_SERVICE);
//String mCameraId = manager.getCameraIdList();
CameraCharacteristics c = manager.getCameraCharacteristics(mCameraId);

isHardwareLevelSupported(c,3);

The example code brought me to the issue of declaring and initializing mCameraId.

This was another attempt at checking:

Range<Integer> range = mCameraCharacteristics.get(CameraCharacteristics.SENSOR_INFO_SENSITIVITY_RANGE);
int max = range.getUpper();
int min = range.getLower();

I'm probably missing something simple. Most examples I find have been in the context of Camera2 or in Koltin which I was having issues translating to Java.