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Cultivated Reef

Turn Your Apple Device Into a Webcam


ReviloM

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I recently stumbled upon an app set for Apple devices that allows me to turn any of my devices (iPhone, iPad, iMac, or even iPod) into a webcam to watch over my tank remotely. The app set is free. Essentially, the cost is free because I already had an old iPhone I do not use. More than one Apple device can be used to view from different angles. You will need two Apple devices.




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The Athome Streamer app will be used on the devices that will be your webcams. The Athome Camera app will be used on the device used to view your webcam.


Here is my tank:


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My phone is plugged in for continuous. I have this as the only app running so low risk of overheating.


The app has features such flash, switch camera (back to front lens), Mute, record, take a pic, and even Walkie Talkie.

Here is the flash feature. I am controlling the flash of my phone I am using as a webcam. Keep in mind I am out of town at the moment and my lights have just turn off according to their schedule.

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The setup was pretty easy. I think this app may also be available for android as well.

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Wow, thanks for sharing this. I'm going to try it out. Quick question though, the detail section says it's a free trial period but doesn't state the length of the free trial. Any idea what the normal cost is/was?

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Wow, thanks for sharing this. I'm going to try it out. Quick question though, the detail section says it's a free trial period but doesn't state the length of the free trial. Any idea what the normal cost is/was?

I am not sure how long it will be free but I know it used to be $7.99 which still isn't bad.

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Tried them. My net at home sucks to the point that none of these worked well.

 

Most of them store all the video in the 'cloud' so beware they will chew up your bandwidth.

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Tried them. My net at home sucks to the point that none of these worked well.

 

Most of them store all the video in the 'cloud' so beware they will chew up your bandwidth.

this one just streams. It only records to your mobile device. So if you take a photo, it saves to photos on your phone and not a cloud
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I just made it home and the phone was cool to the touch which means low CPU usage. Overall, I am pleased with the app. It gave my old phone a purpose and gave me a cheaper alternative than buying a webcam.

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Update with this app. I have had this app running on the old iPhone 5s since original post. The phone is not experiencing any issues. The only time the app went down was when the app's server was down for maintainence.

 

I would recommend to not use the screen black feature because that can crash the app. It crashed on initial setup when I was testing it but the app hasn't crash since not using that feature.

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I use something similar but on a droid phone. Walmart special $19 phone LG fuel I believe. The nice thing about it is I have it mounted in my sump area and stream it to my apex fusion. And I have the app set up to run in the background so I can use the display on the phone as a controller for the tank. Not bad for a free app and (ip cam) I think, and less than $20 phone.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I use something similar but on a droid phone. Walmart special $19 phone LG fuel I believe. The nice thing about it is I have it mounted in my sump area and stream it to my apex fusion. And I have the app set up to run in the background so I can use the display on the phone as a controller for the tank. Not bad for a free app and (ip cam) I think, and less than $20 phone.

The Dude abides! B)

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Do you have to set up port forwarding and all that jazz for this to work? I can't figure out how to get that going with my real ip cam, so that will make or break me downloading this.

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Do you have to set up port forwarding and all that jazz for this to work? I can't figure out how to get that going with my real ip cam, so that will make or break me downloading this.

Not sure. I use the app with iphone. Here is the app website: http://ichano.com/ IP Camera Subforum: http://ichano.com/bbs/forums/show/8.page

 

You can get more instructions/support there to set it up with your ip cam.

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The one I use on the droid is easy as hell. After setting up a few quick steps on the phone or device that our streaming from you hit start stream. Then go to a computer and enter the ip address at the bottom of the image on the phone/ device and voila instant stream. Depending on your router and home network you can change more settings and see from anywhere. the app i used was called ip cam and was free with an optional upgrade for like 1.99 which I did because it unlocked more features for my situation.

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  • 3 weeks later...
printerdown01

This was great! Thank you for sharing. This actually gives me a use for my old iPhone as well. We had previously only been using it for international travel LOL. Great for maps, internet, and viber calls :). And if someone jacks it I'm not screwed. But FINALLY I have an everyday domestic use!!

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I use something similar but on a droid phone. Walmart special $19 phone LG fuel I believe. The nice thing about it is I have it mounted in my sump area and stream it to my apex fusion. And I have the app set up to run in the background so I can use the display on the phone as a controller for the tank. Not bad for a free app and (ip cam) I think, and less than $20 phone.

Did you buy the phone just for that? Did you have use for x amount of minutes etc...

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Too bad things like this won't go cross platform. I have an old android tablet that I would happily set this up with, but my other device is a Windows phone...

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Did you buy the phone just for that? Did you have use for x amount of minutes etc...

Yep Walmart special. $19.00 for the phone, never activated it, no need to. LG optimus fuel, net10 phone. cheapest webcam I have found yet. And I also use it as a controller head unit for my apex. I have the webcam app running in the background and the apex dashboard up going on 3 months now no problems.

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  • 5 months later...

Too bad things like this won't go cross platform. I have an old android tablet that I would happily set this up with, but my other device is a Windows phone...

That athome app from the OP does crossplatform! I just tried it from iPhone to android.

 

Now I'm just looking for an app that I can access from a web browser.. So I can watch my tank on my work computer. :)

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