Android camera streaming app

I created an Android app to read video data from the camera of an Android device (which has a camera) and stream it to a computer over WiFi.

Reading images from the camera

Android camera2 API was used to read a sequence of images from the camera.

Server

The sequence of images read from the camera is stored as a list in the server class. This class also acts as the server of the TCP connection that connects with the computer. Server class sends images in this list over the TCP connection over WiFi.

Computer

The python code in the computer is acting as the client of the TCP connection and read the images coming through the connection. These images can be saved as a video or a sequence of images if you like. You can also optionally display the live video. Note that there is a lag of the live video when we do both of the above (storage and display) at the same time.

How to use

camstrm app

1. Connect both the android device and the computer to the same WiFi network.
2. Open the camstrm app on the Android device.
3. Note the IP address that is being displayed.
4. Start the client python app in the computer.
5. Note you have to restart the app every time you make a new connection. Please quit the app completely and start again. Then re-run the client python app.

To get help on the options

python write_vid.py -h

We will get

usage: write_vid.py [-h] [--operation OPERATION] [--camera CAMERA]
                    [--savetype SAVETYPE] [--savedir SAVEDIR]

camstrm

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  --operation OPERATION
                        0:video stream with auto focus 1: single image capture 2: focal
                        stacking video 3: video stream with fixed focus
  --camera CAMERA       camera ID
  --savetype SAVETYPE   0:save as avi video file 1:save as images with
                        timestamp
  --savedir SAVEDIR     save directory for the video
  --ip                  IP address of the Android device

E.g: to run in video streaming mode, with camera 0, save the video as an avi video file, in the path given in — savedir argument

python write_vid.py --operation 0 --camera 0 --savetype 0 --savedir /path/to/save/video/file/

To quit : Press the key ‘q’ on the image display window.

or

CRTL + c on the terminal

Please take a look at the code:

GitHub - sleekEagle/camstrm: Stream camera feed of Android device to computer via ADB

Note that this is still in development and there can be bugs. Please make contributions and help make this app better. Thank you.