this post was submitted on 29 Nov 2023
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Android

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37
Microsoft Phone Link may soon let you use your Android phone as a webcam (www.androidauthority.com)
submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
16 comments fedilink hide all child comments
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[–] [email protected] 22 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

If you're in Linux and you want the same thing right now, scrcpy already offers to expose your cellphone's camera as a video4linux device. See here:

https://github.com/Genymobile/scrcpy/blob/master/doc/v4l2.md

I use it every once in a while when I do a presentation in Teams at work and I need one webcam to show my mush, and another to demonstrate whatever device I'm presenting: I use the cellphone to capture close-ups of the device and focus on features people ask me to show, scrcpy sends the camera capture to a v4l2 device, and Teams uses the v4l2 device as a regular video source.

Super useful!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

Not really an open-source approach, but I found that irium Webcam is generally a lot better if you're just wanting to use your phone as one.

For some reason scrcpy just doesn't work well for me.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 months ago (4 children)

I thought this was built into Android 14, and it's relatively simple already?

https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/how-to-turn-android-phone-into-webcam-android-14/

I always found Phone Link to be bloated and buggy. KDE connect was more reliable for what I needed

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I guess it needs a cable though, and Phone Link is wireless?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Yea I guess so, I'd be curious about the latency from that

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

My Asus laptop came with their own version of this preinstalled. I had to install the corresponding app on my phone, but when I tried it out, I had no noticeable amount of latency for anything you would use a webcam for. It was over a relatively fast WiFi 6 connection though.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Does GrapheneOS not support this? I am not seeing a Webcam option under Use USB for

EDIT: https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/8672-phone-as-webcam/3

Seemingly it is still a pending feature, that will be included with the December quarterly feature release ("QPR1"). The only people who are using it now on their phones are running QPR1 betas, which I think first began releasing in September.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

I was curious if someone was gonna mention KDE connect. From what i saw it looked pretty good though i havent used it myself.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

KDE connect has been really buggy for me since my most recent Linux install. I can't even send texts unless I use the command line. And it has to redownload all my texts every time I reopen the app.

At least I get notifications 100% of the time, which is the most important use case for me.

[–] otp 7 points 8 months ago (1 children)

DroidCam does this

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago (2 children)

yeah. But Droidcam is not free

[–] otp 3 points 8 months ago

Really? I never paid for it. I guess it's missing features unless you pay?

I used it for a good 2 years before I got a separate webcam

[–] brax 1 points 8 months ago

There's a free version and a paid version. The paid version is worth it IMO