What determines the external or internal camera?

[김기홍 (Roy)]

Does the Camera Interface (USB, mipi-csi, ...) determine?

[Eino-Ville Talvala]

We define 'internal' cameras as ones that are permanently attached to the device, and 'external' cameras are disconnectable, such as USB webcams.

The underlying hardware interface isn't relevant - internal cameras can be implemented with a USB bus as well, which is sometimes done for larger form factors and self-contained integrated camera modules.

On Thu, Apr 20, 2023 at 9:36 PM 김기홍 (Roy) <kkh...@alphacode.co.kr> wrote:

Does the Camera Interface (USB, mipi-csi, ...) determine?

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[김기홍 (Roy)]

Is it impossible to switch my USB-WebCam from external to internal device then?

2023년 4월 22일 토요일 오전 2시 45분 5초 UTC+9에 etal...@google.com님이 작성:

[Idle Idle]

Does this mean we can use androidx with usb cameras now? Last updates I saw in 2022 on github said this wasn't possible.

[tonyt...@google.com]

In practice, whether a camera is external or internal is decided by its characteristic, which is configured by its manufacturer.

Currently it's not recommended to use external cameras with CameraX because it's not fully verified and is subject to unexpected behaviors. However you may use CameraSelector.LENS_FACING_EXTERNAL to select a USB camera with some preconditions:

• The USB driver on the device is capable of recognizing it as a camera. This can be checked by simply see if it's on CameraManager.getCameraIdList. Usually an external camera has a string ID instead of a number.
• The USB camera has REQUEST_AVAILABLE_CAPABILITIES_BACKWARD_COMPATIBLE capability.

[Idle Idle]

Thanks! I will give this a shot today and then if anything I suppose I can just interact with a usb camera directly using typical android apis? (im not actually sure. im starting on a new project next week with a usb camera and I'm trying to prep myself.) 😂