Android phone camera

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.

Try Android IP webcam and motion eye in hassio.

1 Like

Cool, it seems motionEye is not needed as IP Webcam is already supported as integration: https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/android_ip_webcam/

Trying it now with an LG G2 and seems to be behaving fine w.r.t. temperature, need to test it a bit more to be sure.

yes, but using motion eye you get motion detection.

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.

No, please try motion eye first! You will prob love it, it can be run as a ha add-on!

how do I use motion eye with a camera on my old cell?