Missing a web cam? Use your mobile! December 6, 2006
Posted by Mads Foli Bjerre in : Mobile , trackbackThis is eerie. David posed a question earlier today: Why not use the camera in your mobile as a webcam? Connect it over Bluetooth and there you go. I responded that I didn’t think the bandwith was high enough.
Well… turns out I was wrong.
When I got home I checked my news feeds, and guess what pops up: a post about Mobiola, a program that turns your mobile into a web cam. I’ll be darned! So of course I had to immediately download and check it out on my Nokia N73.
Turns out it works like a charm:
The image quality is not the best (neither are the looks of the model on the above picture, but hey — I got a two month old son which at least explains the bags under my eyes), but it works! High Quality setting results in some very low fps, so if you’re going for that 1999 56K modem web cam look, this setting is for you.
It’s probably also a good idea to have your phone charger handy. A constant Bluetooth connection and the camera on (my N73 even turned on the photo light the entire time) will drain the phone battery pretty fast.
The trial version of Mobiola allows you to run the program for 7 days and drops the Bluetooth connection after 5 minutes. The full version is USD $19.95. If you want to try it out, you can download it from Handango here.
Comments»
Have you run Mobiola Web Camera on Windows Vista?
Yes, I installed Mobiola on Vista RTM but uninstalled it afterwards. The drivers Mobiola installed (btcam-something) resulted in a BSOD. The first one I’ve seen in Vista!