How to programmatically start front camera of iPad

Question

I would like to start front camera of the iPad when app starts.

How do I do it programmatically?

Please let me know.

Answer 1

First thing you need to do is to detect if your device has got front-facing camera. For that you need to iterate through the video devices.

Try this method of UIImagePickerController:

+ (BOOL)isCameraDeviceAvailable:(UIImagePickerControllerCameraDevice)cameraDevice

This is a class method and UIImagePickerControllerCameraDevice can take two values:

- UIImagePickerControllerCameraDeviceRear
- UIImagePickerControllerCameraDeviceFront

Example code:

if( [UIImagePickerController isCameraDeviceAvailable: UIImagePickerControllerCameraDeviceFront ])
{
   // do something
}

Note that this is available for iOS 4.0 and later.

Also I am not sure if there is any API's to start the front-facing camera up front. The camera always seems to start in the same mode that the user left it the last time it was used. Maybe by design Apple did not expose any API's to change this. Maybe Apple wanted the users to make a call on this.

Nevertheless you can atleast detect the availability of Fron Camera & provide your feature.

Answer 2

If I understand your question correctly, all you have to do is open your Camera to be in Front Mode instead of Rear Mode, so write this inside the method where you call the picker for the first time:

picker.cameraDevice=UIImagePickerControllerCameraDeviceFront;

Hope this answers your question.