How to turn your Android phone into a webcam

Have you ever been dissatisfied with the low-quality webcam that your laptop was shipped with? Apart from the very latest laptops, the tiny cameras on notebooks seem almost like an afterthought. Here's how you can put that fancy smartphone camera of yours to better use, in the function of a webcam. 

1. First of all, you need to install an app from the Play store. There are a few apps that can turn your phone into webcam. Some of them are IP Webcam, DroidCamX Pro and WO Webcam Lite. Here is how it is done with IP Webcam, which is free. 

Install the app and open it up for the initial setup. Some settings are given by default, and you can change any that needs to be. Set up the required camera resolution, frames per second or FPS rate (the higher, the better), image quality and the TCP port (8080 should suffice ). It is recommended that you not set a resolution higher than that supported by the phone. 

2. Set up a user ID and password, which is good for the phone webcam's privacy and security. At the bottom of the setup page, you will see the option to start the server. Do it. Now, you will see the IP address in which the camera is available, with the port that you set earlier. It should be like 192.168.x.x:8080. 

3. At this point, go to your computer and open up your web browser. Browse to the phone webcam's IP address. Simply type in the complete IP address (with the port) at the address bar and hit enter. If your Java plugin is enabled, you should be able to view the video immediately. Various options like opening the video stream in a media player, Java plugin viewer , JavaScript viewer, etc., will appear. ​ 4. To view and share the camera across various applications, download the IP Camera Adaptor. Install it and set it up matching the settings on your phone webcam. Let the video size be auto-detected, as otherwise it will lead to cropping in the video feed. It is possible that your firewall will block the video feed, indicating a false positive. Add an exception for this. You're set! Your Android phone can now be used as a webcam.