You're at your desk on a call. The doorbell rings — a package, a contractor, the dog walker. If you work from home, half your interruptions are "I just need to see what's happening in the other room / at the front door." You don't need a security system for that. You probably have the answer in a drawer.
Here are five ways to press an old Android phone into service as a work-from-home camera, ranked by how well they fit the WFH use case: quick glances from the machine you're already sitting at, without babysitting the phone.
1. Background Camera RemoteStream (screen off, check it from your browser)
Background Camera RemoteStream is built for exactly this shape of problem: the phone records with the screen off (no glowing rectangle pointed at your hallway all day), stores footage locally — no account, no cloud, no subscription — and runs an embedded web server, so you check the feed from a browser tab on your work machine over your LAN. If you also want to peek while you're out, it can push an unlisted YouTube Live stream.
Setup is genuinely short: install, point the phone, open the phone's address in your desktop browser. The honest trade-off: you're the sysadmin. Local storage means it's on you to manage the footage, and LAN access means out-of-home viewing goes through the YouTube Live route.
2. IP Webcam
The long-running classic. Serves an MJPEG stream over your LAN that any browser or VLC can open. Endlessly configurable and free, but the setup is more manual, and the UX shows its age. Great if you enjoy tinkering; less great if you want it working before your next meeting.
3. AlfredCamera
The easiest cloud option: install on both your old phone and your main one, sign in, done. The trade-offs are the standard cloud ones — account required, footage goes through their servers, and the useful features sit behind a subscription. If a browser tab on your LAN already covers you, you may not need any of that.
4. DroidCam (if what you actually want is a webcam)
Different job, worth listing because the searches overlap: DroidCam turns the phone into a webcam for your video calls — your face, not your house. If your actual problem is "my laptop camera is terrible," this is your answer, and none of the monitoring apps above are.
5. A cheap used security camera
The non-app answer. A second-hand cam is inexpensive and purpose-built, but now you own another device, usually another account, and often another cloud dependency — to solve a problem the phone in your drawer already solves.
Related from me: 7 ways to turn an old Android phone into a baby monitor (ranked) — same idea, different room.
Open question for the WFH crowd: if your employer routes your work machine through a full-tunnel VPN, your LAN devices become unreachable from it. How do you handle "glance at a local camera" from a locked-down work laptop — second browser on a personal device, split tunneling, something smarter?
App: Background Camera RemoteStream on Google Play · Built solo by Super Funicular LLC.
Top comments (0)