The upgrade of your phone does not mean launching the old in a drawer. With only a few quick steps, you can reuse this retired iPhone or Android in a useful safety cam, without required equipment required. It is an easy and friendly way to keep an eye on your front door, your garage or any place that counts the most. And above all, you can start small.
Everything you need is a free home safety camera application and a way to position the phone where you want coverage. If you want to go further, a simple phone medium or a montage can give you the perfect angle. In a few minutes, your unused device can start broadcasting a video, adding an additional protection layer to your home without spending a penny.
Step 1: Install a safety camera application on your old smartphone
The Alfred camera is free and allows you to configure a CAM solution yourself.
To start, you will have to choose a security camera application. Most applications offer several of the same features, such as local streaming, cloud streaming, recording and storage of images locally or remotely, as well as detection and movement alerts. Once configured, you can monitor your living space and control your security camera anywhere, directly from your new phone.
One of the best application options to configure your phone as a security camera is Alfred. It’s multiplatform, so it doesn’t matter whether your old phone was an Android phone or an iPhone. And the same goes for your new phone.
Alfred is free to use and gives you a remote view of your live flow, movement detection with alerts, storage of free clouds, bidirectional audio food and the use of front and rear cameras. To unlock additional features, such as visualization and registration of higher resolution, zoom capacities, advertising ads and 30 -day cloud storage, you can Upgrade to Alfred Premium.
1 and 1 Download Alfred (Android, iOS) to your old and new phones. You don’t have to use a phone as a monitoring tool – You can also download Alfred to your tablet or PC if you prefer to monitor from there. Just make sure the application is on both devices.
2 On the new phone, browse the introduction and type To start. Select Viewer and type Following.
3 and 3 Once you get to the connection page, click Connect with Google (A Google account is required) and log into your Google account identification information.
4 On the old phone, repeat the same steps, but instead of selecting Viewerselect Camera. Make sure you connect to the same Google account.
Alfred’s application supports night vision, people’s recognition and more.
Once the two phones are connected to Alfred, you have almost finished the configuration. Alfred simplified the camera options to include only a few parameters. On iOS, you can only activate movement detection, choose between the front and rear cameras and activate or deactivate the audio. If you use an Android device, you have these options and can also activate continuous focus, automatically reopen Alfred if the phone restarts, define resolution and activate an access code lock.
From your new phone, you can modify a few additional settings, such as implementing notifications or deactivated, defining a camera or viewer name, adding other people to your Circle of trust (Granting other people access to your video flows), deleting a camera, checking how many times a camera has disconnected, defining the motion detection sensitivity and allowing a low light filter on the cameras.
If Alfred does not really do it for you, you can explore other CAM application options. Other applications that can give your old phone an upgrade of the safety cam include:
- Faceter: Faceter is a monitoring application that offers quick configuration and cloud storage for Apple and Android phones.
- Epoccam: Epoccam is a very fast cam application that is made for content creators but can serve a wide variety of objectives. It is currently only done for iPhones.
- Ivcam from E2ESOFT: IVCAM is a more open cam solution that is best for those who really want to tinker with the camera settings and personalize them, although like Epoccam, it focuses a little more on webcam activities than on safety.
Step 2: Choose a place for your new smartphone security camera
You can use your new security camera in various ways after the transition.
Once the flow is operational, you will have to configure and position the camera. You may want it to focus on the main entry point of your home, your backyard, where you store valuables or a point that you may think is particularly vulnerable. If you have several old phones, you can configure multiple cameras for a fairly robust video cover.
Step 3: Mount and feed your safety camera smartphone
To mount or position the camera, a small smartphone tripod Or the suction car support can do wonders and help you position the camera in a discreet place. To expand the field of vision, consider buying a wide angle lens for your phoneSomething that can be bought between $ 5 and $ 20 online.
The streaming video is very high power intensity and the phone will be on 24/7. To prevent the phone from dying in the early hours, you will have to position it near a power source. A 10-foot micro-USB,,Lightning cable Or USB-C The spare cable and telephone charger will give you more flexibility in the place you can put it.
And that’s it: you can now use the safety security application on your new phone to display the flow from your old phone’s camera, and you made your home more secure without spending a lot at all.
Note: When you choose your assembly location, be sure to avoid furnace vents and other heat sources, as in a window that gets full sun all day. Heat sources can damage the lenses and battery of your camera over time, especially when combined with the heat of a powerful power task such as live diffusion.
Final note: former smartphones and security problems
Smartphones will possibly age security updates, which means that they can possibly become vulnerable to attacks. If your old phone is still online – like using it as a safety camera – it’s a problem.
First of all, we recommend that you wipe all personal data on the phone before turning it into a camera. Second, automate your updates when possible. Third, plan to give the phone a final useful date, after which you recycle it. These days, companies are trying to postpone security updates for five to seven years after the Liberation (some were even longer in recent years). We have a complete guide to the safety of older phones if you want to know more.
Finally, if we are committed to using your smartphone for home safety purposes, don’t forget that you can also download an application like Hidden Camera Detector to automatically search for revealing signs that there is a camera looking in the room. Airbnb may have prohibited interior security cameras, but we don’t enlighten you if you always want to check when you travel.
To find out more, see the Best DIY home safety systems.
We have never heard of anyone who hacked this kind of applications, and it is generally not worth it. The greater security risks, as mentioned above, come from the use of phones which no longer receive security updates.
Camera apps like Alfred Camera include low light modes that use software to improve visibility in darkness. Although this is not a real night vision, it is suitable for most situations of low light.
Yes, applications like the Alfred camera include a two-way audio option using phone speakers.
