Holidays are nice. You may depart behind your every day worries, your obligations… your work. On the similar time, you permit behind your home and your pets. Each time I depart for various days, I fear concerning the safety of our home and miss our cats so badly that I take into consideration slicing the holiday brief.
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It isn’t nearly holidays. A yr in the past, one in all our cats had a critical accident and wound up in a solid and collar. As a result of I wanted to maintain a continuing eye on him — and nonetheless meet my deadlines — I made a decision to repurpose one of many many Android telephones I had mendacity round. With the assistance of a simple-to-use utility known as DroidCam, I turned my cellphone right into a webcam appropriate for quite a lot of safety and monitoring purposes.
Since I first wrote this text, the developer has launched a extra highly effective model of the software program, known as DroidCam Webcam & OBS Camera, which provides OBS Studio integration. In case you solely want to make use of this as customary webcam, the unique software program will suffice.
Let me present you the way that is accomplished.
use an previous Android cellphone as a safety or pet digicam
What you will want: An Android cellphone (working model 5.0 and up), an influence twine for the cellphone (you do not need your battery to expire), the DroidCam app, and an online browser on the identical community because the cellphone.
Open the Play Retailer in your Android machine.
Seek for DroidCam and, as soon as you’ve got discovered it, faucet Set up.
Make certain your Android machine is on the identical wi-fi community because the desktop or laptop computer you will be utilizing to view the digicam, then begin the appliance. As soon as it begins, it can current you with the tackle you utilize to attach out of your browser.
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The output on the display screen shows the IP tackle and the port you could use to entry the digicam. In case you level an online browser to http://SERVER:4747/video (the place SERVER is the IP tackle displayed by DroidCam), you will see the video output from the digicam.
The free model of the app solely affords 240p or 480p resolutions. To get 720p and 1080p resolutions it’s essential to buy the professional model of the app (DroidCamX $5.49 on the Google Play Retailer), which provides sound, HD mode, and SmoothFPS for extra steady video. Nevertheless, for very fundamental safety/child/cat cam utilization, the free model does simply high quality.
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Bear in mind to plug that cellphone into an outlet, as streaming video can eat away on the battery. The excellent news on that entrance is that the app will proceed streaming, even after your cellphone is locked and asleep.
That is the gist of utilizing DroidCam as an online/safety cam. I’ve used this setup for a number of purposes, the place I wanted extra eyes than evolution gave me.