What do you do with an old phone that’s no longer in use? Give it away, sell it off cheap or lock it away in that drawer? These might be some of your decisions towards an old phone which you no longer need its usage. Aside from the aforementioned decisions, an old phone can still be utilized in a much better way. You can achieve maximum usage of your old Smartphone by turning it into a surveillance camera and use it for security. By doing so, you don’t need to worry about buying CCTV or IP security systems equipment. Your old phone already has the majority of the components of becoming a real security camera. For it has a camera lens and can be connected to the internet. Nevertheless, you would still need cables and the right software to accomplish this.

By having just your old phone and the needed requirement in place, I will show you the steps on how you can turn your old or spare phone into a security camera.

Needed components and software
Your old phone
Security camera app (Haven)
Cables
Access to a Wi-Fi internet connection



After getting everything in place, let take a look at the Haven Security camera app. The app was built by the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. It was created for people who needed a way to protect their personal spaces and possessions without compromising their own privacy. Moreover, the Haven app works with an internet connection. It can be connected to the internet either by using a Wi-Fi or with a USB-to-Ethernet adapter.



Setting up Haven
Get the Haven app and put in your phone. The app can be gotten from Google Play Store by searching for Haven. Or you can get it from F-Droid (the open-source app store). Once gotten and installed, open it for configuration by swiping through it and tap on Configure. Give it the necessary permission prompts for photos, media, and file access and also to take pictures and record video.



Your live camera feed will show up in the next screen. Switch between the front-facing or rear-facing cameras at the lower left corner of your screen. You can use the slider along the bottom of the screen to set how sensitive you want the motion detection to be. The motion sensor can be readjusted anytime to match your environment.



You can adjust its settings to be more sensitive once a sound or motion is detected. This will prompt your phone to start recording once its sensor detects any sound or motion in its space.



You can receive feedback by either through SMS alerts or signal. To receive SMS alert sent to your primary phone. In the app settings, just provide your phone number to be used. To set up video surveillance, go to settings and turn on the Video Monitoring toggle and set the video monitoring length. This will choose how long Haven will record the environment.

Mounting your phone in place
Look for the right spot to give you the best angle-view to mount your phone. Get power to the phone and run your Ethernet cable or get connected using Wi-Fi. Make sure everything is set properly and well placed.



Is Haven supported on iPhone
By the time of this writing, Haven doesn’t support the iPhone yet. Although, there’s hope to run Haven on iOS devices in the future. Nevertheless, iOS users can still benefit from the Haven experience. Just get an old android phone or buy an inexpensive one and get Haven installed. Your iPhone can be used to receive audio and photos notification directly from the android phone. This can be achieved by enabling the Tor Onion Service feature in Haven (it also requires the installation of Orbot app as well). Moreover, this can grant you remote access to all Haven log data by simply using your iPhone with the Onion Browser app.

Final words
Using an old Smartphone as a surveillance camera is way better than selling it for a fraction or allowing it to gather dust in the drawer. Not only will your phone be able to send you audio and photos automatically via SMS or signal. It’ll also be able to log events on the phone itself which you can view at any time. Nevertheless, you’ll have to trigger the phone’s monitoring manually as when needed and also turn it off manually.

Source: https://techablaze.com/blog/how-to-use-your-old-phone-as-a-security-camera/

This is rubbish.
Using my old phone as a camera will eat through its 8GB storage space in 16 hours or less.
How do I power the device that long to begin with?
One should not also forget the inbuilt camera app puts the phone in standby mode after a few minutes of inactivity.

meobizy:
This is rubbish.
Using my old phone as a camera will eat through its 8GB storage space in 16 hours or less.
How do I power the device that long to begin with?
One should not also forget the inbuilt camera app puts the phone in standby mode after a few minutes of inactivity.

Hey! Come on.
The camera isn't up there capturing every second. It uses motion and sound sensor to capture and record once there is an object in its view.

This it records and stores for 15 or any minute your specify. Thereafter sending you the event directly to your phone and also storing the log.

At the end of the day, you can pull down the phone, empty it store or copy it out.

One thing you should take in all this. The phone is not recording 247. But only when it detect something and record for some few minutes.

By this, the battery is sustain and remain in a standby mode or you can extend a charger cord and still power it up there.

It's a smart phone and it records smartly by using an app

Raychux23:


Hey! Come on.
The camera isn't up there capturing every second. It uses motion and sound sensor to capture and record once there is an object in its view.

This it records and stores for 15 or any minute your specify. Thereafter sending you the event directly to your phone and also storing the log.

At the end of the day, you can pull down the phone, empty it store or copy it out.

One thing you should take in all this. The phone is not recording 247. But only when it detect something and record for some few minutes.

By this, the battery is sustain and remain in a standby mode or you can extend a charger cord and still power it up there.

It's a smart phone and it records smartly by using an app

It's still Rubbish

hmm i hope i can use my tecno spark to achieve this