Some things on Windows Phone 7.5 “Mango” are so easy that it’s almost embarrassing. Like showing a running video of what the camera is seeing on the background. So simple, in fact, that no-one ventures to describe it. And consequently, you might spend some fruitless time looking for it. I am therefore very thankful to Matthijs Hoekstra for sending me a piece of sample code that I condensed even more.
First, you need to make a new Windows Phone application for framework 7.1. In the MainPage.xaml, delete everything between the phone:PhoneApplicationPage, i.e. the complete grid “LayoutRoot”
Then, set SupportedOrientations and Orientation to "Portrait" and shell:SystemTray.IsVisible to “False”
Then you add the following XAML code:
<Rectangle > <Rectangle.Fill> <VideoBrush x:Name="videoBrush" /> </Rectangle.Fill> </Rectangle>
And then you make sure the following code is in the MainPage.xaml.cs:
public MainPage() { InitializeComponent(); Loaded += MainPage_Loaded; } void MainPage_Loaded(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) { var cam = new PhotoCamera(); videoBrush.SetSource(cam); }
Deploy the app, and you will see the camera view on your screen. See what I mean by “embarrassingly simple”? Now do something funny with it ;-)