Recently, one of my cats had a bit of a problem and was forced to wear a collar around its neck to prevent it from irritating a nasty wound. We were instructed to watch him in case the collar came out. Since I work from home I don’t have a problem with that, but there are times when I have to bury my face in the screen, so I can’t always keep an eye on the little guy.
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As they say, necessity is the mother of invention. To be able to follow him and still meet my deadline, I decided to use one of the many Android phones I have — and with the help of an easy-to-use app called DroidCam. This app makes it easy to create a webcams can be used for many applications (security, monitoring, etc.). Let me show you how this is done.
How to use an old Android phone as a security or pet camera
What you need: Android phone (running version 5.0 or later), phone power cord (you don’t want to run out of battery), DroidCam app, and web browser on the same network as your phone.
Open the Play Store on your Android device.
Search for Droidcam and once you’ve found it, tap Install.
Droidcam is free to install and use. Screenshots of Jack Wallen/ZDNET
Make sure your Android device is on the same wireless network as the desktop or laptop that you will use to view the camera and launch apps. Once started, it will show you the address you use to connect from your browser.
The DroidCam interface is a bit old but works great. Screenshots of Jack Wallen/ZDNET
The output on the screen shows the IP address and port you need to use to access the camera. If you point your web browser to http://SERVER:4747/video (Here SERVER is the IP address displayed by DroidCam), you will see video output from the camera.
My cat is being watched and he doesn’t even know it. Jack Wallen/ZDNET
The free version of the app only offers 240p or 480p resolutions. For 720p and 1080p resolutions, you must purchase the pro version of the app (DroidCamX $5.49 on Google Play Store), adds audio, HD mode and SmoothFPS for more stable video. However, for very basic security/baby/cat usage, the free version works well.
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Be sure to plug that phone into an outlet, as streaming video can drain the battery. The good news is that the app will continue to stream, even after your phone is locked and in sleep mode.
That’s the gist of using DroidCam as a security web/cam. I’ve used this setup for a few apps where I needed more eyes than evolution gave me.
