Something like Android IP Webcam using iPhone

Configuration
1

I’ve got my old Nexus 7 set up as a web cam in HA using the the IP Android Webcam component and it’s great. Now I’d like to do the same thing with an iPhone that I am no longer using. Any ideas?

I’ve looked at ManyThing – but I don’t see how I can set it up to simply display a card like IPAndroid Webcam does.

2

I achieved something similar using ‘iPCamera - High-End Network Camera’ from the app store for $.99. It is pretty bare bones, but sufficient for what I am using it for. No motion sensing or night vision. One thing that is nice is that it works with iOS7, so I could use an old iPhone 4

When you have it running on the iPhone, it displays the IP address where it is broadcasting on the phone. Go there from any browser on the same network, and there it is. It has a few basic controls you can toggle on and off. To integrate with HA, I used the Generic MJPEG Camera component, and it is displaying as a card.

After playing around for a bit, I figured out that I could toggle the settings on and off with a url. I created a couple command line switches with the more useful ones. Here is my setup:

switch:
  - platform: command_line
    switches:
      camera_torch:
        friendly_name: Torch
        command_on: 'curl http://<ipaddress>/parameters?torch=1' 
        command_off: 'curl http://<ipaddress>/parameters?torch=0'
      camera_flip:
        friendly_name: Flip Camera
        command_on: 'curl http://<ipaddress>/parameters?flip=1' 
        command_off: 'curl http://<ipaddress>/parameters?flip=0'

camera:
  - platform: mjpeg
    name: iPhone4
    mjpeg_url: http://<ipaddress>/live
2 Likes
3

Thank you! That works perfectly.

4

Hi I tried this on 3GS and it works, but the APP on iOS must be up and running.

Were you able to have this app running in background on other iOS devices?

I need this app running in background with display off.

5

I think this has to run in the foreground, to have the camera active. I run it on an old 4 that i don’t use or anything else. It stays plugged in, and the time to lock setting is set to never. With this app, you double tap to blank the screen.

6

Are you still using this app for a camera solution? I have trouble integrating it in Lovelace, my mjpeg_url is set as in this example but I have tons of trouble getting the image to show in a glance card… works in Firefox but not in Safari. Could you please share your lovelace card settings?

7

Sorry I can’t help with the Lovelace. I haven’t used this for a while now. I stopped using it when my iPhone4 battery swelled and stopped working.

8

you need something like this in ur configuration.yaml file.

camera:
  - platform: mjpeg
    name: iPhone
    mjpeg_url: http://x.x.x.x/live

the card I use is

type: picture-entity
entity: camera.iphone
camera_image: camera.iphone
show_state: false
name: iPhone Camera

hope that helps.

1 Like
9

hmm… same story - works correctly in Firefox, but only shows the broken image icon in Safari :frowning: a couple of restarts of browser/HA and everything’s good :slight_smile: thank you!

10

still using this neat little app on an old iPhone that’s connected to a charger all the time and came up with another idea:
I’m sort of troubled by cameras being live in my house while it is occupied so I was looking for a way to turn off the camera at specific times and enable it based on i.e. occupancy. I looked for solutions turning the camera completely off remotely but couldn’t find any so I decided to just switch to the front-facing/Facetime camere instead. This can be done by flipping the ‘camera’ parameter in another command_line switch like this:

ip_camera_onoff:
        friendly_name: OnOff
        command_on: 'curl http://user:pass@IP_ADDRESS/parameters?camera=0'
        command_off: 'curl http://user:pass@IP_ADDRESS/parameters?camera=1'

Obviously camera 0 is the main camera, camera 1 is the FaceTime camera. I hope this helps someone.

1 Like
11

Do you guys know if it’s possible to use the ‘iPCamera - High-End Network Camera’ app and motion detection?

12

I’ve successfully tested this via the frigate add-on (popular open source software nvr).
You need to install the IP camera on an iOS device, then define the camera as a (I believe it was) MJPEG source in frigate. Frigate can detect motion, etc., you can also add the configured source as a camera entity in HA.

1 Like