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.
I’m not aware of software to achieve this, but I assume it wouldn’t be possible to activate the camera based on motion detection, as the phones do not have hardware for this. Sure, it could be possible to have the camera working 24/7 and only record when there’s movement in front of it (e.g. watching for pixel changes in the image being captured) but I doubt these cameras can sustain that kind of uninterrupted use, meaning at some point they will just fail. Just my thoughts, as I find the idea interesting but would love to have that same kind of solution.
I had an old HTC phone that I used as a garage security camera for 2-3 years straight. It had to be restarted every couple months, but otherwise worked fine. Now you can get a $20 IP camera that surpasses it in every way tho.
The camera is on all the time, the recording/streaming only starts when requested or on motion detection. Did you expect a PIR sensor on a phone?
That’s what I meant: I don’t know (as in I have zero clue) the camera is designed to operate that way. Is a naive assumption on my side and I’d be glad to learn this is not the case.
No, I didn’t expect a sensor, that’s what I tried to say: the hardware is not there, so (on my mind) a constant image analysis/monitoring would be necessary in order to perceive movement and start recording, as in writing video to storage.
There is no reason a camera cannot be on all the time other than power consumption. Why couldn’t it? The only limitation is software. Other parts of a phone can overheat from continuous operation (CPU et al., voltage converters, maybe flash LED and vibration motor) but not the camera.
Sensor wear, mechanical parts (if any), heat, etc. Essentially wear and tear. Just like nothing lasts forever, using it in a way that it’s not intended/tested/quality assured, may reduce its lifespan.
Basically: “is the device intended to be on and recording 24/7?”