I would like to set up several android phones as cameras, but not running all the time. Rather, that I start recording on the phone or start motion capture (i.e. as I leave the house for a longer time) via a toggle in HA. How would you guys recommend that I do that?
I can either record only into the phone (easiest option) or somehow use the phone as a WiFi camera, or even record and upload afterwards.
I’ve tried surveillance camera apps in the past (years ago) but was mostly disappointed by the old phones heating up and crashing and being very slow in general.
Android IP Webcam has built-in motion detection, with zones and everything. The advantage is that it’s running on the phone, not on the Pi which is busy doing something else. The possible disadvantage is that data is not centralized on the Pi, though HA can still access it as a normal IP camera.
Anyway, left it running and the app stopped responding to web requests after about one hour, even while plugged in. Need to check if there is some setting in LineageOS, but so far it is not usable w.r.t. this.
The app has a nice web ui which also allows access to the video archive, this is pretty cool. There’s an uploader plugin that can afterwards copy the data elsewhere.