How to use camera live feed as a activity backgrou

Question

I am trying to make an App in which I need to use camera live feed as a background. (I know its a stupid thing to do but can't help, its a client demand).

I have tried doing it using SurfaceView but no success so far.

So far whatever I found on Stack Overflow are more of a guesses or directions how to do it but no real time examples or code help is out there. It would be great if someone who has done this before share a piece of code with Stack Overflow users like me.

Answer 1

package com.example.CameraPreview;

import android.content.Context;
import android.content.pm.PackageManager;
import android.hardware.Camera;
import android.util.AttributeSet;
import android.util.Log;
import android.view.SurfaceHolder;
import android.view.SurfaceView;

import java.io.IOException;

public class CameraView extends SurfaceView implements SurfaceHolder.Callback {

    private SurfaceHolder mHolder;
    private Camera mCamera;

    public CameraView(Context context) {
        super(context);
        if(checkCameraHardware(context))  {
            mCamera = getCameraInstance();
        }
        mHolder = getHolder();
        mHolder.addCallback(this);
        mHolder.setType(SurfaceHolder.SURFACE_TYPE_PUSH_BUFFERS);
    }

    public CameraView(Context context, AttributeSet attrs) {
        super(context, attrs);

        if(checkCameraHardware(context))  {
            mCamera = getCameraInstance();
        }
        mHolder = getHolder();
        mHolder.addCallback(this);
        mHolder.setType(SurfaceHolder.SURFACE_TYPE_PUSH_BUFFERS);
    }

    @Override
    public void surfaceCreated(SurfaceHolder surfaceHolder) {
        // The Surface has been created, now tell the camera where to draw the preview.
        try {
            mCamera.setPreviewDisplay(surfaceHolder);
            mCamera.startPreview();
        } catch (IOException e) {
            Log.d("CameraView", "Error setting camera preview: " + e.getMessage());
        }
    }

    @Override
    public void surfaceChanged(SurfaceHolder surfaceHolder, int i, int i2, int i3) {

        if (mHolder.getSurface() == null){
            return;
        }

        try {
            mCamera.stopPreview();
        } catch (Exception e){

        }
        try {
            mCamera.setPreviewDisplay(mHolder);
            mCamera.startPreview();

        } catch (Exception e){
            Log.d("CameraView", "Error starting camera preview: " + e.getMessage());
        }
    }

    @Override
    public void surfaceDestroyed(SurfaceHolder surfaceHolder) {

    }

    private boolean checkCameraHardware(Context context) {
        if (context.getPackageManager().hasSystemFeature(PackageManager.FEATURE_CAMERA)){
            return true;
        } else {
            return false;
        }
    }

    public static Camera getCameraInstance(){
        Camera c = null;
        try {
            c = Camera.open();
        }
        catch (Exception e){
        }
        return c;
    }

}

Answer 2

Take a look here:

http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/media/camera.html

There is all the code you need to make an activity which shows the camera preview.