How to use your phone camera as webcam

Last weekend, I was stuck at a place with no wireless connection and to everyone’s muse, no data connection as well. Honestly, there has been days like this before, only now, I needed to make an urgent video call. A desktop with internet was found but for my face to visible I still needed a camera. Not any camera, a camera with a USB attachment-a webcam. Losing hope I sat with my mobile phone and there stuck an unusual idea- why not use the phone’s camera to play as webcam. It’s a camera after all with a USB connection somewhere down the chip. After some clicks I found out there are many ways in which this can be done. But that one that worked was fromdev47apps.com (glad they put it there). Here’s how you can make it work.

1. The first step is to download the apk file and copy & install it in your phone.

1. The phone app needs respective PC software to communicate. For this you need to download the windows client and run it on your desktop.
2. On your Android phone find USB debugging mode and turn it ON. It must be in the developer options and if you don’t find it anywhere, go to About Phone and tap build number 7 (seven) times. This would enable the computer to install all the relevant drivers from the internet.
3. Now connect the phone and wait as the drivers are installed.

    4. Finally open the applications in both the phone and the desktop and click on ‘connect to phone (USB)’ on the desktop application window. When the camera starts on the phone click on ‘show camera output’ for a test run.

After this the phone connects as a camera and is automatically used as camera output by the video call application and other video based applications like Skype, Gtalk, etc.