With ICS google changed the way you can access the camera API, requiring you to attach a view to your camera object before it can be used. This makes it inherently difficult to use the camera LED from a service(as it has no views).

I am trying to use the camera led from a service(accessibility), so the phone is woken up then needs the LED then goes back to sleep. I have tried calling an activity attaching view to camera object, doing work, finishing activity, but this works only some of the time(probably has to do with whether phone is truly awake, i believe if its not the activity is not created until the phone wakes up).

While this is a LED question just being able to use the camera from a service would solve my issue(yea i know why google changed it, its not my fault they dont have a dedicated LED api).