Turn Your Old Phone into A Home Surveillance Camera or Baby Monitor

Reinstate Your Old Phone

Electronic waste is becoming a major issue in our environment around the world and we all should rethink and come up with ways to use old electronic machines and devices whether broken or not there is always something you can do with it. Share how you have reused your old device in the comments below.
If your old phone(s) can still turn on, you can put it to good use in your home. If it works great with Google Home then you can connect it with your home speaker and have it as a Google Home Speaker. For me, today I thought of sharing how I reinstated my old phone to be a home/office cam, here's how I did it...
Obviously its an app that made this possible, you'll find most apps offer many of the same features, such as local streaming, cloud streaming, recording and storing footage locally or remotely, and motion detection and alerts but I found this one app Alfred Camera being the best for this job.

Alfred Camera is free cross-platform app that gives you a remote view of your live feed, motion detection with alerts, free cloud storage, a two-way audio feed and use of both the front and rear cameras. Ain't that awesome? Lets set it up and see if you'll like it, it doesn't matter if its an Android or iOS phone.

Step 1: Download and install Alfred Camera from the your app store both in the new and old phone.

Step 2: On the new phone, swipe through the introduction and tap Try It Out!. Select Viewer and tap Get Started.

Alfred Camera Installation and Setup

Step 3: On the sign-in page, click Sign in with Google (a Google account is required) and sign in with your Google account credentials.

Alfred Camera Viewer Sign In With Google Account

Step 4: On the old phone, follow same procedure but instead of selecting Viewer, select Camera. And make sure to sign in to the same Google account.

If you have a view of the old phone camera then you are done though not just yet, you can also use your computer as a viewer to watch the live feed in your office on Alfred WebViewer https://alfred.camera/webapp

Alfred Camera WebViewer - JTechpreneur

For settings, on iOS, you can only enable motion detection, choose between the front and rear cameras and enable or disable audio. On Android device, you have those options and you can also enable continuous focus, have Alfred automatically reopen if the phone reboots, set a resolution and enable a passcode lock.
Adding other people to your Trust Circle (granting other people access to your video feeds) is also a great feature to use if you live with other people, you can also remove a camera, check how many times a camera has disconnected, set motion detection sensitivity and enabling a low-light filter on cameras.

To unlock additional features, like higher-resolution viewing and recording, zoom capabilities, ad removal and 30-day cloud storage, you can upgrade to Alfred Premium. If Alfred doesn't make your happy don't worry, you can also use Manything, Salient Eye, Presence and IP Webcam which are great apps too with affordable subscription models if you need more features.

To mount or position the camera, a small smartphone tripod or suction cup car mount will work in positioning the camera in an inconspicuous place. To broaden the field of view (fish eye view), consider buying a wide-angle lens for your phone and lastly streaming video is very power-intensive, and the phone will be on 24/7. To keep the phone from dying you will need to position it close to a power source.