Although most laptops and desktop PC monitors have a built-in webcam but using the phone’s camera in its place may have advantages depending on the loved ones.
For example, it is likely that a computer webcam, especially on laptops, is of poor quality and with low resolution shots, with a non-optimal video quality.
If you use the back camera of your cell phone like a webcam, you can take advantage of its high resolution and transmit images and video via webcam on video conferencing programs or videochat with higher resolution.
To use the back camera of an Android smartphone like a webcam for the computer, to be used also for Skype or other live video programs, it is however necessary to install an application on the phone and a program on the PC that acts as a link.
There are two best apps that you can use to turn the camera of an Android phone into a webcam. Let’s have look:
1) The best solution is to install the free application DroidCam, an app for Android that turns the smartphone (or tablet) into a comfortable and portable webcam.
DroidCam must be installed both on the phone as an Android app, and the Windows PC client, which can be downloaded from the Droidcam website.
Once the two installs are done, from the PC program, you must enter the IP address of the phone, which is displayed on the first screen of the Droidcam app.
Obviously, to make the smartphone work like a wifi webcam it is necessary that phone and computer are connected to the same network.
From the desktop client, you can play audio from the phone and choose the video quality between low, normal and high.
You can also choose to connect your phone and PC via USB cable and avoid network configuration.
When everything is ready, press the start button in Drooidcam in your phone, to start streaming the images taken that will then be visible on your computer.
From the application settings, you can choose whether to use the rear or front camera.
The free version of DroidCam is good, but it’s not perfect.
For example, you can only use the webcam in landscape mode, the zoom is limited in resolution and also the brightness and various other controls are limited.
But if you were satisfied, it is definitely worth buying the paid version of DroidCam spending € 4 and unlocking all the features.
2) Another application that works well and is free to use an Android phone as a webcam for the computer is IP Webcam.
At the same time, on the computer, you need to download and install the IP Camera Adapter.
The adapter installed on a Windows PC simply serves to detect the Android phone as a webcam.
The prerequisite for making this application work is that the Android computer and mobile phone are connected to the same Wifi network.
Then run the application on Android to configure some options such as quality, resolution and password if the network is also used by other computers.
Scroll through the options to the end and tap where Start Server is written to start video transmission.
On your computer, open your web browser (recommended Chrome or Firefox) and type the address displayed on the mobile phone screen that should be of the type: http://192.168.2.101:8080/videofeed.
If everything went well, and open the link of the viewer.
You will see the shooting from the camera of the mobile phone on the browser.
Touching the Actions button on the phone you can leave the webcam function active in the background so you can use the phone to do other things.
If there are any problems, open the IP Camera adapter from the Windows Start menu, type the address you read in the mobile phone field http://:/ videofeed and click on the Detect button.
In the same window write the username and password if they have been configured on the mobile phone.
The camera phone becomes a full-fledged webcam and you can also use it for programs such as Skype and other web applications.
In Skype, in the video settings, you have to select MJPEG camera as input source.
IP Webcam makes it extremely easy to use an Android phone with a high-definition camera as a webcam for streaming at optimal levels.