Android Network IP Camera

I recently bought the Galaxy S3 and wondered what to do with my old android phone. Most of my friends already have better phones and I'd probably only get $15-$20 if I was to sell it.

I figured that since it has wifi and a camera, I could just use it as a wifi network camera.

I installed this free app - https://play.google.com/store/apps/de...

For this demo video I've placed the phone in my driveway. The camera is partially blocked because the phone is just leaning up against something else. You can run the app 24/7 as a security cam. Just be sure that there's somewhere to plug the charger in.

If you were worried that the phone might be stolen, you could easily hide it, mount it up high or disguise it in something like a plant pot.

• Category

  Science & Technology

[Andre De Guerin]

It would be useful if someone were to release an adaptor so you could put four microSDs connected to a single microSD, or other semi-proprietary standard such as M2.

[philstuffs]

A lot of phones can support micro SD up to 64GB. That seems pretty big to me. How big were you hoping for?

[kerimil]

damn those smartphones... LOTS LOTS LOTS of features for little money... sensors, gyros, accelerometers, wifi, gps and god only knows what all in a fairly compact package

[philstuffs]

Yeah it makes you wonder. Everyone gets excited (including me, to be fair) about the raspberry pi and the arduino and such like. But there are old android phones with a lot more features for the same kind of money!

[VODKA0710]

I did something like this (with the very same app, or it seems so) a few weeks ago. Now I'm thinking about combining it with an HTPC for recording the video stream. (Like MythTV or something.)

[philstuffs]

Good idea. You can do it with 'motion' running on a linux machine. But the ideal situation would be for the app itself to detect motion and save to the phone. Then you could use something like dropbox to ensure a constant cloud backup of the pictures/video incase the phone is stolen or damaged.

[Scupperjack]

Can you supply the make and model of the phone you used this on?

thanks,\

[kc8rwr]

An alternative might be to connect the Android phone to an Arduino using the audio connector. (Actually an Atmega chip plus min components, not a real Arduino if you are trying to beat RasPi) Then you can use the Arduino's GPIO pins to control stuff. Now your audio is all tied up so you still aren't quite matching what a RasPi gets you. Maybe with a BT Audio adapter? Add it all up and you are probably still spending more on addons then just buying the RasPi.

[kc8rwr]

Phones are harder to interface to things. Sure you can get something like an IOIO for it but that is going to cost almost as much as two RasPis! That might be ok if you just want one to play with for a project then take it all apart to reuse for another. If you want to actually build things to keep it's going to add up fast!

Then you still have a smartphone. If you want to keep it lean and cut out all the software that your embedded project doesn't need it's going to be a lot of trouble.

[kerimil]

I've been experimenting with android SDK and processing to write apps but that was just basic stuff like an app that changes colour of the background when you press a button. I am nowhere near more advanced stuff such as readiing sensors and streaming that through bluetooth

[kerimil]

yup same here. However, smartphones can't drive motors/relays, control lcd displays and such - you need a microcontroller for that. The best idea is probably to combine sensors, computing power and wifi/3g that a smartphone offers with a microcontroller using a bluetooth link. A simple bluetooth module for arduino can be gotten for ~10-15$

You can get apps that let you control arduino via bluetooth but it would be best to learn how to write android apps yourself.

[philstuffs]

The app already has an option to auto-start with the phone, so that's useful. Myself, I'm running it on mains power and then in the event of a power outage, it will run on the battery. Concealing it would indeed be easy, especially since the camera lens on this type of phone is generally very small.