Are there any applications that can turn an old smart phone into a wildlife/security camera? (lemm.ee)

submitted 11 months ago by TerkErJerbs@lemm.ee to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world

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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.

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[-] TerkErJerbs@lemm.ee 2 points 11 months ago

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. 🤷‍♀️

[-] TrickDacy@lemmy.world 5 points 11 months ago

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

[-] TerkErJerbs@lemm.ee 4 points 11 months ago

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.

[-] CmdrShepard@lemmy.one 3 points 11 months ago

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.

this post was submitted on 22 Oct 2023

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