6 Steps To Use Android Camera As Webcam

6 Steps To Use Android Camera As Webcam

  09:51    Abhishek Chatterjee

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Video conferencing has become a new activity that can easily lessen the distance between two individuals even if both of them are sitting in two different countries. A lot of applications and sites such as Hangout and Skype are really helpful to easily use the video conferencing method to have a detailed conversation with your loved ones.

But to start with the video conferencing, you may need a good camera in your computer to get a clear picture of the person to whom you are talking. Many times, buying an expensive camera for your computer is not an easy task. Similarly, when you have a big screen of your computer and have a bandwidth connection, you may not find it reasonable to install the video conferencing applications on your smartphone.

Hence, now there is an excellent way using which you can easily use your android camera as web cam in your computer. The process is quite simple to use if you follow these 6 steps properly. The only thing is that you need an android device with the update of 2.2 or higher.  You should also have Skype installed on your computer. There are different ways to connect the smartphone with the computer. Here it is being done through Wi-Fi.

Step 1: Things that you need

You will need following things to set up

A Wi-FI connection to which both the smartphone and the computer is connected

Computer system should have Skype installed and should have the browsers Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox

The android smartphone should have an update of 2.2 or higher

The free IP Webcam should be installed on the smartphone from Google Play store

The free IP Camera Adapter should be there on your computer

Step 2

After the application IP Webcam has been installed on your phone, open it and make the necessary changes in the settings depending upon your need. The adjustments that you can go for are the resolution, orientation, quality, focus mode and also the frames per second. Your phone should not go to sleep in between. Also the application and the whole process will surely drain out a lot of battery. So, the best way is to plug the charger on for your smartphone. Also to get a secured session, do not forget to put a password.

After doing all these, now you have to go down and have to click on the option ‘Start Server’.

Step 3

You can see a link showing an IP address on your smartphone. Type this link in Chrome or Mozilla of browser of your computer.   As you click ‘enter’ you will get a page with a number of options. From these options, you need to click on the option ‘use browser built-in viewer’.

After doing this, you will be able to watch the video feed from your smartphone on the browser of the computer. But somehow if you are not able to see any of such feeds, then you should go back and try out by selecting some other options.

Step 4

Now you have to open the IP Camera Adapter that you have already installed on your computer. Here you will get a link such as http://<your_webcam_ip>:<port>. You have to replace this with the IP address that you have received on your phone. The IP address from the smartphone to your computer should look something like http://192.168.248.207:8080/videofeed. In case if you wish to make your connection secure and use a password, then you can enter these. After this, now go for ‘Autodetect’ option and then click on ‘Apply’ and finally click on ‘OK’.

Step 5

Now you have to start the application Skype on your computer. As you start Skype on your computer, it will detect the video feed from your android smartphone and will take it in the form of a webcam.

For both Windows and Mac, the driver is an easy installation to do. But the process can be a lengthy one in case of Linux operating system. The driver will appear in the form of a script that you have run after changing the variable value. As the driver gets downloaded, there will be also some additional files that will get downloaded on the computer. Whenever you use the android camera, each time you have to run this script.

After this you can start any of the application that you wish to use such as Google Hangout or Skype. Today there are many more different video calling applications available for your need. But whatever application you need to use, first you have to start the Webcam driver and then have to start the video calling application.

Use android camera as webcam through USB cable

The second way to use your android camera as webcam on your computer is by using your USB cable. But when you are using this method, it is much time consuming and also you will need another application namely Droid cam in place of the earlier application using while using Wi-Fi.

Here are the steps to use android camera as webcam through USB cable.

1.     To use USB cable, the smartphone has to be set in debugging mode. This can be done by going to settings, then applications, then development and then finally reaching USB debugging.

2.     Now you can connect the smartphone to the computer using your USB cable. Make sure that the system may ask you to choose the storage mode, but you need to avoid this.

3.     Now go to Google Play Store on your android smartphone and install the application Droid Cam. After the installation is complete, you will get a message ‘Starting Server’.

4.     Now you also have to install the application as driver on your computer. For this you can visit Dev47Apps.

5.     Now simply start the Droid Cam and select the option of ‘USB’.

6.     Now last thing that you have to do is to configure your settings for video applications and then the camera set up is ready to be used.

It is only for the Linux operating system, where you can use the application IP Webcam in both Wi-FI as well as USB cable method. But for Windows and Mac, you need different application for two different methods.