[tacostakohashi]

I have a whole drawer full of android phones with broken screens, or in some cases bad headphone sockets, flakey USB sockets, etc.

Some software to turn these into gadgets like a surveillance camera, doorbell camera / intercom, walkie talkie, etc would be cool. Basically the equivalent of a Nest camera / doorbell using the camera, and not using the screen so much (although its often still useable, just a bit too annoying for frequent use). It would be nice re-using some broken, "free" hardware, so if it gets damaged/stolen it doesn't really matter, those Nest / equivalent devices are not cheap.

[Vrondi]

Easy to turn an old Android phone into a webcam (I wrote this up for a less tech-savvy friend): http://teadragon.org/?q=content/turn-old-android-phone-or-ta...

Once set up, you can plug the stream into a security software on a PC or NAS to record the stream, detect motion, etc.

[zozbot234]

The issue is that mobile devices (phones, tablets) are not really designed to run continuously like that. At a minimum, you'd want to remove the battery and connect a separate power source. And even then, the electronics inside might still overheat and degrade.

[nikau]

Can confirm, setup an old galaxy smartphone as a webcam during the pandemic, after a few months the battery turned into a pillow.

[doubled112]

Password protected or not, something about that tutorial suggesting to forward ports to an old Android device running a camera software scares me.

[xchip]

That is not a webcam, is an IP cam.

[mod]

The app says "IP Webcam"