Question

I have built an application which takes photos when you touch the preview.
I can take many photos, but sometimes when i touch the preview to take a photo, there is no shutter sound and the whole application freezes. Moreover, after that, if i try to launch launch the built-in camera application, i get a message that the camera can’t be used.

I don’t know the reason for that behavior, it happens randomly and when it happens i must restart the device (Samsung Galaxy S) to be able to use the camera again.

In the DDM, after the crash i can see the following line: keyDispatchingTimedOut

Here is the relevant code:
CameraActivity Class:

public class CameraActivity extends Activity {
  private static final String TAG = "CameraDemo";
  Preview preview;

  public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
    setContentView(R.layout.main);

    preview = new Preview(this);
    ((FrameLayout) findViewById(R.id.preview)).addView(preview);
    ((FrameLayout) findViewById(R.id.preview)).setOnTouchListener(preview); 

    Log.d(TAG, "Camera Activity Created.");

  }
}

Preview Class:

    class Preview extends SurfaceView implements SurfaceHolder.Callback, OnTouchListener {
    private static final String TAG = "Preview";

    SurfaceHolder mHolder;
    public Camera camera;
    Context ctx;
    boolean previewing = false;

    Preview(Context context) {
        super(context);
        ctx = 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);
    }


    // Called once the holder is ready
    public void surfaceCreated(SurfaceHolder holder) {
        // The Surface has been created, acquire the camera and tell it where
        // to draw.
        camera = Camera.open();
    }

    // Called when the holder is destroyed
    public void surfaceDestroyed(SurfaceHolder holder) {

        if (camera != null) {
            camera.setPreviewCallback(null);
            camera.stopPreview();  
            camera.release();
            camera = null;
        }

        previewing = false;
    }

    // Called when holder has changed
    public void surfaceChanged(SurfaceHolder holder, int format, int w, int h) {

        if(previewing){
             camera.stopPreview();
             previewing = false;
        }

        if (camera != null){
            try {

                camera.setDisplayOrientation(90);
                camera.setPreviewDisplay(holder);
                camera.setPreviewCallback(new PreviewCallback() {
                    // Called for each frame previewed
                    public void onPreviewFrame(byte[] data, Camera camera) {
                        Log.d(TAG, "onPreviewFrame called at: " + System.currentTimeMillis());  
                        Preview.this.invalidate();
                    }
                });
                camera.startPreview();
                previewing = true;
            } catch (IOException e) {
                // TODO Auto-generated catch block
                e.printStackTrace();
            }
        }
    }

    public boolean onTouch(View v, MotionEvent event) {
        camera.takePicture(shutterCallback, rawCallback, jpegCallback);
        return false;
    }


    // Called when shutter is opened
    ShutterCallback shutterCallback = new ShutterCallback() {
        public void onShutter() {
            Log.d(TAG, "onShutter'd");
        }
    };

    // Handles data for raw picture
    PictureCallback rawCallback = new PictureCallback() {
        public void onPictureTaken(byte[] data, Camera camera) {
            Log.d(TAG, "onPictureTaken - raw");
        }
    };

    // Handles data for jpeg picture
    PictureCallback jpegCallback = new PictureCallback() {

        public void onPictureTaken(byte[] data, Camera camera) {
            FileOutputStream outStream = null;
            try {
                // Write to SD Card
                outStream = new FileOutputStream(String.format("/sdcard/TVguide/Detection/detected.jpg", System.currentTimeMillis())); // <9>
                outStream.write(data);
                outStream.close();
                Log.d(TAG, "onPictureTaken - wrote bytes: " + data.length);
            } catch (FileNotFoundException e) { // <10>
                //Toast.makeText(ctx, "Exception #2", Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show();
                e.printStackTrace();
            } catch (IOException e) {
                e.printStackTrace();
            } finally {}
            Log.d(TAG, "onPictureTaken - jpeg");
            Toast.makeText(ctx, "SAVED", Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();

            camera.startPreview();
        }
    };

}

Please help, i am trying a few days to understand where the problem is with no success

Eyal

Answer 1

I don’t know what causes that bug, it would really help if you posted the loggcat output from the time from when this error happened.

But, I can make some gusesses. It looks like camera is locked (built-in camera does not work). If your app force closed, the camera lock might be caused by erroneus error handling in Samsung camera HAL. Especially in older phones, like Galaxy S, they did not do the best job at handling wrong, or not standard API calls.

Here are some suggestions of what may have caused this behaviour:

1. You should add a guard for picture taking. Right now, if you touch the screen and take picture, you can touch the screen again, before the picture finishes taking. So, camera.takePicture() will be called twice. The second one will fail. This is my best guess.

   Add some boolean isTakingPicture = false variable and then:

   public boolean onTouch(View v, MotionEvent event) {
     if (!isTakingPicture) {
       camera.takePicture(shutterCallback, rawCallback, jpegCallback);
       isTakingPicture = true;
     }
     return false;
   }
   ...
   public void onPictureTaken(byte[] data, Camera camera) {
     isTakingPicture = false;
     ...
   

2. What do you use previewCallback for? I doesn’t do anything useful here. Preview callbacks sometimes can sometimes cause some pain, although your code looks fine to me. You can alwys try to remove it and check if that helps.