ay-de/kivy_python_camera_demo

Demo/proof of concept application for using the camera of a Windows or Android device. The Kivy framework is used for the UI only. OpenCV is used for the backend communication with the camera modules. Written in Python 3.9.

Kivy_Python_Camera

A simple camera application built to run on Windows or Android. The GUI is created with Kivy, communication with the camera is accomplished with OpenCV and Python. The Android app is built with buildozer.

This is more of a proof of work concept demo than an actual camera application intended to be used as a daily driver.

Note: Taken images are being stored in the Downloads folder.

Development Roadmap

Milestone	Status
Create Github repo	✅
Add basic camera feed	✅
Build the app with Buildozer	✅
Create a basic GUI and preview viewfinder	✅
Add a button to switch between camera lenses	✅
Add a settings page with some options like JPEG quality, and so on	⚠️
Try out direct API calls from Python to Android	❌
Add Github workflow to build new APKs	✅
Add Github workflow to sign build APKs	❌
Add Github workflow to publish APK to release page	✅

Legend: ✅ finished ⚠️ in progress ❌ not started yet

File Info:

Folder	Description
source	Contains the Python source code
recipes	Contains the modified OpenCV recipe to build the latest OpenCV version (current 4.7.0) for Arm64
buildozer.spec	Contains the configurations for buildozer for creating the Android APK

Known Issues

• Ultrawide camera lenses are producing a black image in the viewfinder and no image is saved if the shutter button is pressed under this scenario.
• After switching between more than two camera lenses, the viewfinder becomes slow
• The first App launch crashes after granting the permissions. Start the App again and it will work as intended afterwards.

Used libraries

https://github.com/kivy/kivy

https://github.com/opencv/opencv

Notes

Special thanks to Giles Payne (https://github.com/komakai) for his help getting OpenCV to run on Android.

Installation

Install Buildozer

pip install -r requirements.txt

If you want to build the Apk yourself, navigate with the terminal into the root of this repository and execute

buildozer -v android debug