Have been thinking about this for a couple years. I have old phones kicking around. Battery shot, hardware dated, but the camera(s) and mic and antennas still work. Would be cool if there were a way to set them up (powered) to stream audio/video or even take stills at intervals (or motion-activated) and then sync the content to the rest of the devices on my network.
I don’t know how complex the programming for something like this would be. But I suspect it’s trivial for those who do know.
I use IP Webcam on my old phones as CCTV cameras, one for the inside of my garage and the other in my 3D printer enclosure.
Both cameras Just Work as mjpg cameras in Home Assistant. No internet, nothing.
What I haven’t (yet) tried doing is configuring them in my Frigate nvr (running on docker) - that might give you the complete package you’re looking for.
It’s not exactly what you’re wanting, but there is Remote Video Camera on F-Droid.
If I were doing it, I would look for an app that just implements the same basic functionality as a network-connected camera. Then video storage, alerting, motion detection, etc. would all be handled by something like zoneminder.
I tried using an old phone as a dashcam for a while. It just kept overheating. That’s my vaguely related experience. Thanks for reading.
trivial for those who do know.
Erm, no
Idk… Lots of devs I work with write software for mobile devices all the time. I could’ve worded it better I guess: I’m not a dev. 🤷♀️
The hard part is the hardware as you should really remove the battery from the equation to prevent catastrophic damage from constantly draining and charging an old worn-out battery. Unfortunately most older phones won’t run off wall power without a battery inside so one method is to solder some wires attached to ~4V to the battery contacts in the phone to trick it into thinking there is a battery present and allow you to run the device off USB power directly. This method might vary from phone to phone.
Yeah, making an app isn’t hard in and of itself but trust me, no matter how easy something seems, it just keeps getting harder once you start building. I don’t mean to say you couldn’t make this app in a weekend if you have the right experience, but it’s gonna be buggy until you spend quite a few more hours ironing out the kinks and maintaining it
Feels on that, I know it’s not a one liner. I suppose I asked here because I was looking for a possible open source/community made solution (several devs working on and refining it collectively). As it happens one of the other commenters linked to pretty much this type of solution i.e. Haven which looks dope AF and I’m a take it for a spin shortly.
Haven might do the trick. It’s motion activated and can stream content. Made by the guardian project / Snowden to warn you if someone breaks into your hotel room. Open source, too
