Why aren’t you built in: Turn my camera phone in to a webcam
By Stefan Constantinescu on Tuesday, January 30th, 2007 at 12:08 PM PST In Ideas and rants
I just found out about this application called: Mobiola Web Camera. Here is the product description:
Turn your Symbian smartphone into a high-quality web camera and throw out your bulky USB webcam. Very simple to install and configure, Mobiola Web Camera consists of two software components: (1) a client application that resides on the phone, and (2) a webcam PC driver compatible with any Windows application that can receive video feeds from a web camera including Skype, Yahoo, MSN, AOL IM, ICQ messangers, www.YouTube.com, www.MySpace.com and www.grouper.com. Carry your webcam with you wherever you go and connect it to your laptop at anytime.
This is just one of those things that makes so much sense. It is yet another feature that will encourage users to hook their phone up to their computer.
The only thing I worry about is how exactly would you mount your phone to sit properly? From the looks of it this only does video too. Shame because I’m almost positively sure that the microphones in mobile phones are better than anything that comes with our computers.
Hey,
I’m using ETI FlyCam (bluetooth), works great.Check http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/software/item/ETI_PowerToys_Series_FlyCam.php
gorazd
I was one of the beta testers of the 3rd Edition Mobiola Webcam app, and I have to say it’s not fully developed yet. There’s no option to rotate the screen only 90 degrees, so the phone would lay on its side, as if taking a picture. And there’s no audio. I used this app with my 6682, though, and tried to use it with my N73. For some reason the pc-portion will not run on my computer, and repeated emails to the company yield nothing.
But I agree, Stefan. You’d think this’d be a no-brainer.
For a nice example of how forward looking the Nokia R and D can be you should take a look at the OPEN-SOURCE s60 apache webserver. There are many really interesting functionalities and demonstrations built in to the system including a webcam, remote picture taking and access to contacts and SMS system.
I set this up on my phone (E70) and blew the minds of some techies in my office serving a full website from my mobile.
http://research.nokia.com/research/projects/mobile-web-server/phone-software.html
I’m using Mobiola Web Camera (bluetooth) with my Nokia N73 and it works really fine. And it seems that today they have released USB version for S60 3rd Edition too. I’ve found it here: http://my-symbian.com/s60v3/software/applications.php?fldAuto=226&faq=4
This is great – good stuff Stefan
I think you are very correct about the microphones of phones compared to the one with desktop.
Rajan
can i use it with my nokia 6300 ?
which application can i use with my nokia 6020 to use it as a webcam?
i cant get my samsung rant to work that way and i have a video chat with my family in jamaica on friday ….ugh im stuck