Quest Foreground Camera Streaming (Experimental)

This project is an experimental Android application for Meta Quest devices that demonstrates how to access passthrough cameras from a Foreground Service and stream the camera images to a PC over a wired connection.

The main purpose of this project is to simulate camera access while Quest Link is active, where direct camera access is normally restricted or unavailable.

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Motivation

Passthrough Camera API is not supported over Quest Link.

• This project explores the following idea:

Even while Quest Link is active, a Foreground Service–based Android app running on the headset
can access passthrough cameras and stream the video to a PC via USB using adb forward.

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Features

• Foreground Service–based camera access
• Access to left and right passthrough RGB cameras
• H.264 encoding using MediaCodec
• Optional JPEG frame streaming for simple visualization
• Separate TCP streaming servers per camera
• Wired streaming to PC using adb forward
• No UI required after service startup

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YouTube

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Usage

1. Install from release

Download the APK from the Releases page and install it on a
Meta Quest 3 / 3S device (Horizon OS v74+).

You can install the APK using one of the following methods:

• Meta Quest Developer Hub
• adb install <apk-file>

2. Start the service

Launch the app once to start the Foreground Service.
After the service has started, the UI can be closed.

3. Forward ports to PC

adb forward tcp:18081 tcp:8081   # left camera (H.264)
adb forward tcp:18082 tcp:8082   # right camera (H.264)
adb forward tcp:19091 tcp:8091   # left camera (JPEG)
adb forward tcp:19092 tcp:8092   # right camera (JPEG)

4. View streams on PC

ffplay -fflags nobuffer -flags low_delay -framedrop \
  -analyzeduration 2000000 -probesize 2000000 \
  -f h264 tcp://127.0.0.1:18081

(Use 18082 for the right camera.)

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Unity Visualization

Sample Unity components for receiving and visualizing the streams are provided in the unity-sample directory.

These samples are intended for simple visualization and experimentation (e.g. receiving JPEG streams and displaying them on textures).

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Notes

• Performance and stability are not guaranteed
• Actual behavior may change depending on Horizon OS version.

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License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.

See the LICENSE file for details.