I have a Master’s Degree in Interactive Telecommunications so I get a lot of calls to help people with their technical systems. These calls are mostly from my Mom wanting to watch TV and they mostly result from her not understanding the universal remote. My life on the family AV squad would be helped if I could see what she sees when she calls. I thought it would be nice to give her a hat with a camera in it. My first thought was one of those swell network cameras. They are small wireless and I would not have to do any of the netwoking. Unfortunately my Mom does not have an Internet connection. My next thought was to use some the solutions that the lifecasting folks are using like Qik but I don’t think that can stream to another phone and she usually need help when I am out and about. Also I kind of wanted learn how to program for Android so I decided to do it myself on one of those. I did it as a one day project for ITP’s 4in4.
Before you say how ridiculous it makes people look remember that she is usually in the privacy of her own home and does not have to wear it all the time like the lifecasters. I only got as far as uploading pictures to the server so you have to watch on a constantly refreshing web browser. Eventually I would like to be able to point on my phone’s touch screen and have that be reflected by a laser pointer on the camera side. The code is mostly mushing together the Camera Preview example from the Android api examples and this tutorial for uploading files. I will past the code below. I looked at some of the getting started stuff but I got YALF (yet another language fatigue) thinking about activities and views and intents. Somehow I got it done without understanding any of that. My biggest headache was in getting the manifest right when I added another app to the a single project in Eclipse. In the end the only way I could get it to work was to hand edit the xml in the last tab rather.
package com.osullivision;
import java.io.DataInputStream;
import java.io.DataOutputStream;
import java.net.HttpURLConnection;
import java.net.MalformedURLException;
import java.net.URL;
import java.net.URLEncoder;
import android.app.Activity;
import android.content.Context;
import android.graphics.PixelFormat;
import android.hardware.Camera;
import android.os.Bundle;
import android.util.Log;
import android.view.KeyEvent;
import android.view.SurfaceHolder;
import android.view.SurfaceView;
import android.view.Window;
public class CameraHat extends Activity implements Camera.PreviewCallback, Camera.ShutterCallback, Camera.PictureCallback {
final String TAG = “CameraHat”;
Camera mCamera;
private Preview mPreview;
boolean freeToSend = true;
ShutterThread myShutterThread;
class ShutterThread extends Thread {
public void run(){
while (true){
if (freeToSend){
freeToSend = false;
Log.v(TAG,”thread ready”);
takePicture();
}
}
}
}
public void takePicture(){
mCamera.takePicture(this, null, this);
}
@Override
protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
// Hide the window title.
requestWindowFeature(Window.FEATURE_NO_TITLE);
// Create our Preview view and set it as the content of our activity.
mCamera = Camera.open();
Camera.Parameters p = mCamera.getParameters();
int CAM_W = 160;
int CAM_H = 120;
p.setPictureSize(CAM_W, CAM_H);
p.setPictureFormat(PixelFormat.JPEG);
//p.setPreviewFormat(PixelFormat.JPEG);
mCamera.setParameters(p);
//mCamera.setPreviewCallback(this);
mPreview = new Preview(this);
setContentView(mPreview);
myShutterThread = new ShutterThread();
myShutterThread.start();
}
// ———————————————————————-
@Override
public boolean onKeyDown(int keycode, KeyEvent event) {
Log.v(TAG, “KeyDown” + keycode);
if (keycode == KeyEvent.KEYCODE_CAMERA || keycode == 8) {
mCamera.takePicture(this, null, this);
mCamera.startPreview();
}
super.onKeyDown(keycode, event);
return true;
}
// private Camera.ShutterCallback sillyDelay = new Camera.ShutterCallback() {
public void onPreviewFrame(byte[] data, Camera camera) {
// TODO Auto-generated method stub
if (freeToSend){
freeToSend = false;
Log.v(TAG,”preview”);
new Uploader(“http://itp.nyu.edu/~dbo3/up.php”, data, “androidTest.jpg”);
}
}
public void onShutter() {
Camera.Parameters p = mCamera.getParameters();
int CAM_W = 160;
int CAM_H = 120;
p.setPictureSize(CAM_W, CAM_H);
p.setPictureFormat(PixelFormat.JPEG);
//p.setPreviewFormat(PixelFormat.JPEG);
mCamera.setParameters(p);
}
// };
// private Camera.PictureCallback doSomeThingWithIt = new Camera.PictureCallback() {
public void onPictureTaken(byte[] data, Camera camera) {
Log.v(TAG, “Took Picture” + data.length);
mCamera.stopPreview();
new Uploader(“http://itp.nyu.edu/~dbo3/up.php”, data, “androidTest.jpg”);
mCamera.startPreview();
// doPost(“http://itp.nyu.edu/~dbo3/upity.php”, test.getBytes());
}
// };
class Preview extends SurfaceView implements SurfaceHolder.Callback {
SurfaceHolder mHolder;
Preview(Context context) {
super(context);
// Install a SurfaceHolder.Callback so we get notified when the
// underlying surface is created and destroyed.
mHolder = getHolder();
mHolder.addCallback(this);
mHolder.setType(SurfaceHolder.SURFACE_TYPE_PUSH_BUFFERS);
}
public void surfaceCreated(SurfaceHolder holder) {
// The Surface has been created, acquire the camera and tell it where
// to draw.
mCamera.setPreviewDisplay(holder);
}
public void surfaceDestroyed(SurfaceHolder holder) {
// Surface will be destroyed when we return, so stop the preview.
// Because the CameraDevice object is not a shared resource, it’s very
// important to release it when the activity is paused.
mCamera.stopPreview();
mCamera = null;
}
public void surfaceChanged(SurfaceHolder holder, int format, int w, int h) {
// Now that the size is known, set up the camera parameters and begin
// the preview.
//Camera.Parameters parameters = mCamera.getParameters();
///parameters.setPreviewSize(w, h);
//mCamera.setParameters(parameters);
mCamera.startPreview();
}
}
public class Uploader extends Thread {
String urlString;
byte[] payload;
String fileNameOnServer;
public Uploader(String _urlString, byte[] _payload, String _fileNameOnServer) {
urlString = _urlString;
payload = _payload;
fileNameOnServer = _fileNameOnServer;
start();
}
public void run() {
HttpURLConnection conn = null;
DataOutputStream dos = null;
DataInputStream inStream = null;
String lineEnd = “\r\n”;
String twoHyphens = “–“;
String boundary = “—————————–29772313742745”;
try {
// —————— CLIENT REQUEST
URL url = new URL(urlString);
// Open a HTTP connection to the URL
conn = (HttpURLConnection) url.openConnection();
// Allow Inputs
conn.setDoInput(true);
// Allow Outputs
conn.setDoOutput(true);
// Don’t use a cached copy.
conn.setUseCaches(false);
// Use a post method.
conn.setRequestMethod(“POST”);
conn.setRequestProperty(“Connection”, “Keep-Alive”);
// conn.setRequestProperty(“Cookie”, “JSESSIONID=”+PlayList.getSessionId());
conn.setRequestProperty(“Content-Type”, “multipart/form-data;boundary=” + boundary);
dos = new DataOutputStream(conn.getOutputStream());
dos.writeBytes(twoHyphens + boundary + lineEnd);
// dos.writeBytes(“Content-Disposition: form-data; name=\”fileNameOnServer\””+lineEnd+URLEncoder.encode(fileNameOnServer,”UTF-8”) + lineEnd);
dos.writeBytes((“Content-Disposition: form-data; name=\”data_file\”; filename=\”” + lineEnd + URLEncoder.encode(fileNameOnServer, “UTF-8”) + “\”\r\n”));
dos.writeBytes(“Content-Type: ” + “image/jpg” + ” \r\n”);
dos.writeBytes(lineEnd);
//Log.v(TAG, fileNameOnServer);
Log.v(TAG, “Headers are written”);
// create a buffer of maximum size
dos.write(payload);
dos.writeBytes(lineEnd);
dos.writeBytes(twoHyphens + boundary + twoHyphens + lineEnd);
// close streams
Log.v(TAG, “File is written”);
dos.flush();
dos.close();
} catch (MalformedURLException ex) {
Log.v(TAG, “error: ” + ex.getMessage(), ex);
}
catch (Exception ioe) {
Log.v(TAG, “error: ” + ioe.getMessage(), ioe);
}
// —————— read the SERVER RESPONSE
try {
inStream = new DataInputStream(conn.getInputStream());
String str;
while ((str = inStream.readLine()) != null) {
Log.v(TAG, “Server Response” + str);
}
inStream.close();
freeToSend = true;
Log.v(TAG, “FreeToSend ” + freeToSend);
} catch (Exception ioex) {
Log.v(TAG, “error: ” + ioex.getMessage(), ioex);
}
}
}
}