I suggest to add TakeVideo. In that case we cover major Camera features.

@VladislavAntonyuk I would say to let that for the next release, for now. If things move faster, we can bring this feature. Remembering that TakeVideo implies audio record as well, so is one more item to check and test

Thanks Pedro! This is a great start! Here's a couple recommendations I have for the API design:

public bool IsBusy { get; set; }

• Can we rename this to something more descriptive?
  • I.e. What does IsBusy mean? Does it mean the CameraView is in use? Or does it mean the the camera shutter is in use? etc
• Should this be { get; private set; }? I doubt we'd want the user to toggle IsBusy.

public bool IsAvailable {get; set; }

• I recommend removing this property, and following the Maui.Essentials example of throwing a FeatureNotSupportedException if a user attempts to use the CameraView on a device where it is not supported
  • If we decide instead to keep this property, I recommend making it's setter private, e.g. { get; private set; }

public void Shutter()

• Let's change this name to be a verb (an action word), and be more descriptive, e.g. CloseShutter, OpenShutter, etc

CameraOptions

• Could you include the API Surface for CameraOptions in the Detailed Design?

public event EventHandler<bool>? OnAvailable

• Could this be changed to public event EventHandler<CameraAvailabilityStatus> CameraAvailablityChanged;?
  • CameraAvailabilityStatus would be an enum

   public enum CameraAvailabilityStatus { Unknown, Available, NotAvailable }

• Let's use WeakEventManager to ensure we don't induce memory leaks and that the event doesn't need to be nullable

  readonly WeakEventManager eventManager = new();
  
  public event EventHandler<CameraAvailabilityStatus> CameraAvailablityChanged
  {
    add => eventManager.AddEventHandler(value);
    remove => eventManager.RemoveEventHandler(value);
  }

public event EventHandler<MediaCapturedEventArgs>? MediaCaptured

• Let's use WeakEventManager to ensure we don't induce memory leaks and that the event doesn't need to be nullable

  readonly WeakEventManager eventManager = new();
  
  public event EventHandler<MediaCapturedEventArgs> MediaCaptured
  {
    add => eventManager.AddEventHandler(value);
    remove => eventManager.RemoveEventHandler(value);
  }

public event EventHandler<string>? MediaCaptureFailed

• Let's use WeakEventManager to ensure we don't induce memory leaks and that the event doesn't need to be nullable

  readonly WeakEventManager eventManager = new();
  
  public event EventHandler<string> MediaCaptureFailed
  {
    add => eventManager.AddEventHandler(value);
    remove => eventManager.RemoveEventHandler(value);
  }

Hi, Is this camera view also the solution to barcode scanning in MAUI? It seems that way from some Zxing repos comments. Is there any estimate of when this could be avaliable ?

Thanx.

PS: If this question does not belong here im sorry and feel free to delete it.

@Mzazvor, So this cameraView will not be the solution for barcode scanning, the ZXing is another project that you can see here. But there are plans to use the CameraView from this package on the ZXing project.

I can't tell you right now when we will release this feature. It's in progress the Android implementation is almost done

Hi all - wanted to ask what’s the status on this? I am not a developer myself but I am building an app where I need a customized camera as part of it. Thanks in advance! :-)

Hey, @thra02ad the implementation for Android is pretty much done... I'm learning about the camera on iOS. I'm building some CameraViews apps in swift to see how that goes and then I'll move to C# and start an implementation for this lib. Right now I don't have any deadline to share with you

Hey, @thra02ad the implementation for Android is pretty much done... I'm learning about the camera on iOS. I'm building some CameraViews apps in swift to see how that goes and then I'll move to C# and start an implementation for this lib. Right now I don't have any deadline to share with you

Thank you so much @pictos for swift reply. Apologies for multiple questions, and fully understand that deadline is unknown at the moment. But would you say realistically there is a chance that it will come for iOS this year? Just trying to figure out contingency plans for my app (wait for it vs change back to Xamarin). :-)

@thra02ad my intention is to have this ticket closed before December kkkkk

@thra02ad my intention is to have this ticket closed before December kkkkk

Thank you very much for coming back to me! Highly appreciated

Hi @pictos, can you share github branch where Is your implementation so we can help you to complete this task?

Thanks

@mapo80, here is the branch. Right now I'm blocked by the tooling... I couldn't deploy/debug using a physical device... So I'll wait until the next release and see if that fixes my issue and move forward.

Great news there is a maui version on the way! :)

When using the cameraview from XCT, the flash causes over (or sometimes under) exponation of the image. Often making it way to white, if taking a photo in a dark room. Will photos with flash work better with this MAUI-version?

@andreasbrostencab, the short answer is "I hope so". The long answer is, that we use the default and simple APIs from the Cameras APIs, because we want to be more general and simple... So we will expose APIs to control the flash intensity or something like, but the new implementation will be easier to expand.

Hope work is going well with this new Cameraview. I have another question around it.
In the Xamarin version, you can't zoom to a lower value then 1.0. Now a days meny phones have "wide angel" letting the user "zoom out" to e.g. 0.5. Will this be supported in this new cameraview?

This is awesome @hjam40 and could be a perfect starting point for this proposal.

@hjam40 thank you for sharing this. I am taking over this proposal from @pictos so I will aim to see what he has implemented in this initial PR at: #1080 and then see if we have some kind of overlap in terms of what we want to achieve.

Is it possible to use it in the Blazor Webview?

Is it possible to use it in the Blazor Webview?

No this proposal won't be providing support for Blazor WebView

Hi, any updates for this proposal? We are looking to implement a camera view in our MAUI app and are considering different options

It is on my list of things to pick up, hopefully going to take a look in August.

maybe you could yoink some code from this: https://github.com/hjam40/Camera.MAUI

@bijington would you mind if I takeover some parts or start with an initial draft PR?

@bijington would you mind if I takeover some parts or start with an initial draft PR?

Please feel free to get involved. I see you have grabbed @pictos draft PR for this work

@bijington would you mind if I takeover some parts or start with an initial draft PR?

Please feel free to get involved. I see you have grabbed @pictos draft PR for this work

Alright, let's go. I have scheduled sometime next weeks, let's see how far I get.

@Dresel feel free to ask questions during the implementation. The Android part is pretty much done, the next one should be iOS. If you need/prefer real-time conversation join our discord server here

Will the proposal API allow for real-time usage of the camera frame data (ie, constant vs discreet capture) so that we can do things like barcode (by far the most requested use of this feature) or OCR (tesseract)?

@kfrancis you can see what will be supported on the first spec of this issue

Hi folks, just curious if there's any update on this?

Work in progress, see #1387 (comment)

Jumping on the back of this, thread as we are middle of migrating to MAUI. We want to find the easiest route with least friction on integrating a camera plugin and hoping this will be included very soon in this library so we wont have to find a temporary work around library. Is there any ETA for this to be completed?

Any updates on the CameraView, specifically for Android and iOS? Is this still being worked on?

I believe @jfversluis is waiting on some feedback on this. And if that doesn't pan out I'll be jumping on this

Correct! I actually pinged them today, which is people from the community who have a working CameraView in their app and are willing to put that in the Toolkit so we have the support for MAUI. Hopefully I'll get word on that soon and else @bijington has offered to take a look, so should be news soon!

Fantastic guys, can't wait to get it. Thanks for the update.

Not sure if this should be included in the description but this is the API design that the kind team are going to be contributing:

CameraView

The UI element/view that can be added to an applications UI and renders the preview from a connected camera.

public class CameraView
{
    public static readonly BindableProperty SelectedCameraProperty; // Or possibly ActiveCameraProperty
    public static readonly BindableProperty ZoomFactorProperty;
    public static readonly BindableProperty ResolutionProperty;
    public static readonly BindableProperty IsCameraBusyProperty;
    public static readonly BindableProperty IsAvailableProperty;
    public static readonly BindableProperty FlashModeProperty;
    public static readonly BindableProperty IsTorchOnProperty;

    public event EventHandler<MediaCapturedEventArgs> MediaCaptured;
    public event EventHandler<MediaCaptureFailedEventArgs> MediaCaptureFailed;

    public CameraInfo? SelectedCamera { get; set; } // Or possibly ActiveCamera
    public float ZoomFactor { get; set; }
    public Size Resolution { get; set; } // I believe this only covers the capture resolution - perhaps it should be named `CaptureResolution`?
    public bool IsCameraBusy { get; set; }
    public bool IsAvailable { get; set; }
    public bool IsTorchOn { get; set; }
    public CameraFlashMode FlashMode { get; set; }

    public void Shutter()
    public void Start()
    public void Stop()
}

CameraFlashMode

Enumeration of the possible modes the flash can be set to.

public enum CameraFlashMode
{
    Off,
    On,
    Auto
}

CameraInfo

Provides information about a camera that is connected to a device.

public class CameraInfo
{
    public string Name { get; }

    public string DeviceId { get; }

    public CameraPosition Position { get; }

    public bool IsFlashSupported { get; } // Could/should we enhance this to be a list of capabilities to cover other features like Auto Focus, etc.?

    public float MinimumZoomFactor { get; }

    public float MaximumZoomFactor { get; }

    public ObservableCollection<Size> AvailableResolutions { get; } // two questions; 1. does this need to be observable? 2. maybe SupportedResolutions is a better name?
}

CameraPosition

Enumeration of the possible positions a camera can take.

public enum CameraPosition // Should we have an External value? Can we determine that?
{
    Unknown,
    Rear,
    Front
}

CameraProvider

Provides the ability to obtain information about the cameras connected to the device.

public class CameraProvider
{
    public ObservableCollection<CameraInfo> AvailableCameras { get; }

    public void RefreshAvailableCameras();
}

It would be great if the CameraView could make use of the CameraProvider class internally by default but allow a developer to interact with it as well.

Any chance you guys would consider adding the ability to have a stream come out of the cameraview for processing through things like AI, barcode scanners, etc?

public class CameraView
{
    public Stream OpenStream();
}

Maybe a binding point to Command?

Any chance you guys would consider adding the ability to have a stream come out of the cameraview for processing through things like AI, barcode scanners, etc?

public class CameraView

{

    public Stream OpenStream();

}

Maybe a binding point to Command?

Yes definitely! There isn't anything really documented but this is something that we hope to follow up on once the CameraView gets merged.

The current thinking is to provide potentially 2 mechanisms of achieving this:

• through some level of access at the platform level, this is to avoid unnecessary allocations/conversions between platform types and common types if a dev wants to process the data on the platform itself.
• through some common API that is accessible in the common code.

The thought behind this would allow developers to build something as performant as possible which would likely be important if doing something like image processing.

That's a just a conceptual description but how does that sound? I know we have a discussion on barcode scanning that I've been meaning to update. This would likely be a first good use case for it.