How to watch a periodically shot image on other PC/Smartphone via Internet (no local WIFI)?

Question

There are a lot of webcam apps for Android. Unfortunately most work only in a local WIFI network, real streaming of the android cam over internet seems rather tricky, but not impossible.

I'm just interested to see a periodic image of a lab device (updated every 30-60 sec). Options like Google Hangout video chat or Skype video chat with two accounts would work, but the video quality is quite poor for this realtime solution, some images with adjustable resolution made periodically would be better and save battery (this app might resolve this problem)

Teamviewer Quick Support looks nice, remote control & view via PC of your android device, so I would just need an app that makes periodically an image:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.Nishant.Singh.DroidTimelapse

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.dinglisch.android.taskerm

But is there an app that does this all in a more easy manner? Without starting several apps and hacks? Just making an image every 30-60 seconds and send it to imageshare service and update the browser tab on PC every 30-60 seconds. But the URL therefore should not change. Or giving the the android phone a IP via dyndns and run somekind of FTP server on it, where the image gets replaced on and on.

I'm not sure what the easiest and most reliable option is, anybody has a tip?

Edit: I'm root and on 4.2.2 (Xperia Z)

Answer 1

Another approach:

The free app IP webcam is a video streaming tool primarily, but there's also an option to fetch only a photo. It brings a webserver where /photo.png is a continuously updated resource. Since it gets refreshed each time you request it via a browser, you don't have to care about taking a picture every X minutes.

You then can use port forwarding on the router to access the phone's webserver from www.

Ip webcam also features authentication with username/password, but I don't know how secure it is.

Answer 2

That's my solution:

Create a tasker profile that is triggered every X minutes. Its task has two actions:

1. take a picture and save it with a static name
2. upload the photo to a cloud storage

I found FolderSync, which has a Tasker integration and it lets you upload files to many kinds of cloud storage (as title and description suggest, at least - I didn't test it yet) including ftp, sftp, google drive and dropbox. To receive the images in a webbrowser, a simple js script should do it if you make your uploaded file public ('everybody who has the link...'). Otherwise, you may have to implement an authorization in your script.

So it should be possible to use these two apps for your purpose. Here are some pros and cons:

advantages

• while you can use dropbox or something similar, you don't have to host anything
• it's relatively simple

disadvantages

• you searched for a solution with one app but need two (I think thats a minor...)
• you will have to buy FolderSync (and Tasker, eventually)

Hope this helps (at least for getting new ideas)!

Answer 3

Tasker is the way to go with this one. Or, I suppose Llama might do the trick for you as well --

As for the receiving end, automatically refreshing a browser window? You'd need a bit of javascript for that --- you would have to be hosting the image share service, yourself - which I don't think you're going to do.. right?

You could, after all, have a simple webserver on the phone that is taking the pictures, and do it that way, as well.. but that requires a bit of knowledge on how to configure your firewall ---

Do you really want to take a picture every 30-60 seconds? and record each picture? or would you rather have something that takes a picture when you want to see it?

TeamViewer would be your best option in that case -- you could just use TeamViewer to get into your phone, and either leave the camera running or just use it to take a picture.

Or, the combination of those two things are probably going to be your path of least resistance ---

//EDIT

Based on your comments, it seems like this is the route you'll want to go.

1). Set up an HTTP server (Not FTP) - on your android. Connect your Android to WiFi so you can have a static IP, which will simplify the rest. 2). Tell your firewall/gateway (dependent on your ISP) that your Android device is an HTTP server. 3). Set up Llama to take a picture every x seconds, and put the picture in /path/to/http-server/latest-picture (if you want to save all the pictures, then you'll need it to mv /path/to/latest-picture /path/to/older-pictures_{timestamp} - which Llama has variables for, I'm sure... 4). Point FireFox to http://your.external.ip.addr/path/to/latest-picture

Voila - !

This can be a bit complicated, but if you have patience, I'll help.