How To Use Laptop Camera As Ip Camera

How to turn your laptop into a abode security arrangement

(Image credit: Phillip Tracy/Laptop Mag)

With 1 of a half-dozen gratuitous programs, y'all can use your laptop to monitor your living space through its built-in photographic camera. Most programs are gratuitous but simplistic. For advanced functionality, you can pay for boosted features from the likes of Yawcam (what nosotros're using today), iSpy, SecuritySpy, and others.

I chose Yawcam because it seemed to offer quite a bit of functionality for costless. But, if yous're looking for more, such as FTP-upload, you can ever fork over a few bucks for the premium version.

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How to plow your laptop into a dwelling security system

Earlier we brainstorm, at that place's some setup we'll have to do to our laptop'south ability saver settings. This keeps the laptop webcam from shutting off and provides an always-on interface to monitor our habitation surroundings. Nosotros're going to save power all the same by dimming our screen until it goes dark, and only waking the webcam with motion — one of Yawcam'southward settings.

1. Click the battery icon in the bottom correct corner of your screen to bring up the power saver menu.

2. Click Power & sleep settings.

3. Cull Never from the dropdown that controls power while plugged in.

Setup

From hither, we can showtime setting upward the software and testing our home security photographic camera.

1. Download Yawcam and install the program.

2. From the Yawcam console, choose the Settings tab.

3. Navigate to Device > Change to and select integrated camera.

four. Choose how you'd like to output the imagery whether File (saved to location), FTP (uploaded to server), HTTP (uploaded to web), or Stream. I chose File for testing purposes.