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Kingston: Behold the 1-terabyte flash drive

16:30

5 Apps to Use Android as Webcam on PC

16:27

Due to the high speed internet connections, video chatting and video conferences are a common way to communicate with friends and colleagues all over the world. If you own a smartphone with unlimited data plan or a Wi-Fi connection, you can easily start video chats, but if you are short on data, or you may prefer video chatting on bigger screens (Especially for formal meetings with colleagues at different branches of the office), you can use your PC for video chats. But what about the webcam for your PC? Well, there are many Android apps which let you use the camera of your device as a webcam. What you need is an application installed on your Android device, software installed on your PC, and a USB cable, a Wi-Fi connection or a Bluetooth connection.

In the following we review 5 best Android apps to use Android as webcam on PC:

1. DroidCamX Wireless Webcam Pro

This application is one of the most complete Android webcam apps with so many features. The main advantage of DroidCamX is that it gives you the option to connect your phone to PC over Wi-Fi, with USB cable or via a Bluetooth connection. After installing the software on your PC and identifying your device as a webcam, you can change the Audio and Video settings, change the video quality based on your connection speed, use the Flash LED as a light source, and use your device as a surveillance camera via an internet browser.

The free trial of the application is very helpful to make your mind about DroidCamX.

2. SmartCam webcam

Like DroidCamX, this webcam application supports both Windows and Linux operating systems and supports Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connections (What about USB???). After installing the related software, you can easily start video chats using Google Talk, Yahoo! Messenger, Skype and etc. There are no noticeable lags or delay when using low quality videos and we had some difficulties connecting the phone via Bluetooth.

3. IP Webcam

IP Webcam, other than its feature to use the phone as a webcam on Skype, provides some more features like: Set a password for increasing the security, Use the camera as an IP webcam, stream video in a network without the need to use internet, Use VLC Player or a Web browser to view the camera, change the quality and resolution of the video, and more…

4. USB Webcam

As its name suggests, USB Webcam needs a USB connection to use your device’s camera as a webcam. We had some freezing issues when working with the application and most of all; it hasn’t been updated for a while. If you get this app working, it is very lightweight and useful for low quality streams.

5. EpocCam - Wireless HD webcam

We recommend this app for those who use different services and are looking for an app which supports more services than others. EpocCam supports Skype, Windows Live Messenger, Facebook Video Calling, Chatroulette, Google+ Hangouts (You cannot find many apps which support Hangouts), and more which is quite impressive. After installing the software and drivers (if needed) and finishing the automatic setup process, you have these options and features: Supports both Windows & Mac, use your phone as a wireless microphone, compatible with so many services, and High quality videos.

As a conclusion, we should say if DroidCamX supports the video chatiing services you use more often, then it is a better choice with so many available customizations. Otherwise EpocCam is almost compatible with every famous video chat services and it provides high quality videos with different options and a simple setup process.

Tips & Tricks

How to Use an Android Phone As a Webcam For PC [Windows & Linux].

16:26

1. Use your android phone as webcam using Wifi.

Here, you phone video will be streamed and made available to your PC applications via WiFi. This is the easiest and most flexible way to do it.

Requirement - both your computer and your android phone should be connected to the same network with android connected via WiFi. That means you can either -

Connect both your phone and computer to the Internet using a wireless router.

Or connect your Android to the pc internet using virtual router (Only for windows 7)

Or connect your Android to the PC with a shared wifi network (needs rooted phone with ad-hoc networking enabled).

Once your phone is connected to the same PC network via wifi, follow these steps -

From android market in your phone, install IP Webcam.
Open the app and you will get the configuration screen where you can set the options for port, sound, video quality and username/password.
The default options are good enough, so scroll down and click on he "Start server" option.
Ip Webcam will now open your camera and start streaming the video to a particular IP address and port. Click on the "How do I connect" button appearing on the top left and choose "I'm using Wi-fi router" to get this IP address and port. You will get some thing like "http://10.42.43.89:8080".
Note this address down and type it in your PC web browser. You will get a page with links for various ways in which you can use your new webcam. From the list, you need to use either of the two links.
- Connect to PC for use with Skype and other videochats on Windows.
- Connect to PC for use with Skype and other videochats on Ubuntu GNU/Linux

Depending on your operating system (Windows or Linux), use the links to download and install the webcam driver on your PC.

Windows - For windows, the driver comes as an easy installer.
Linux - For Linux, it comes as a script which you need to run in a terminal as root. Before running, change the value of the variable "WIFI_IP=" to the ip address from IP Webcam in the script. Make sure the computer is connected to the Internet when you run the script the first time. It will try to download and install additional files if your linux doesn't already have them. You need to run this script every time you want to use your android as webcam.

That's it. Now open Skype, Google+ hangout or any other video call application and for the video section, choose the webcam driver you just installed and start it. Here's a Google+ hangout with my android as webcam in Linux.

Tip: For Linux, disabling sound in IP Webcam settings could make the driver not to work.

2. Use your android phone as webcam using USB.

You can use your android as webcam even without wifi by connecting it to your PC via USB. But doing this requires extra work because android can communicate with PC via USB only in debugging mode by using adb.

Also, for USB mode, we need another app called DroidCam. Although the earlier IP Webcam app is more popular, it is more or less limited to WiFi connections especially for windows. So lets see how to configure your android as a webcam via USB -

Setup your phone in debugging mode (Settings -> Applications -> Development -> USB debugging).
Connect the phone to your computer via USB (don't select storage mode if the phone asks while connecting USB).
Download DroidCam from android market,install it and open it on your phone. It will show a "Starting server" message.
Download and install the client application in your computer from Dev47Apps.
Start the DroidCam client and choose the "USB" option or button.

That's it. DroidCam will now open the camera on your phone and you can use it as webcam on your PC. Just configure the video settings of your video call application to use "DroidCam" driver. Here's my Google+ hangout with video from my android phone connected via USB.

For Linux, you can use the IP Webcam app as well. Just connect your phone via USB in debugging mode to your computer and start the driver script. It will detect and use adb to initiate a connection using USB automatically.

Tips & Tricks

Download whatsApp for Windows

16:23

Technology News

Top Trusted Online File Storage for You

16:22

Top Trusted Online File Storage for You Yesterday my brother Zeeshan Afzal asked me that he want to upload his files online. I told him about several websites. It was not an easy task to satisfy him. He read in University so he needs to put a back up of all data. Well if you don’t want to put your assignment but you need free space to put your own games, private videos and photos. I know you cannot pay for online storage so you need to use any free service. Yes, you are in right place to know about some awesome and trusted online storage. Although I tried all of them just to get experience, because I don’t want you guys to face any trouble. I am using skydrive for a long time. I am very satisfied with it. Sometime I think why these services aren’t unlimited, I mean google own the youtube, gmail, blogger and many other services with unlimited space. But when it comes to google drive they give only 5GB why? I think its because we can upload them privately? Well I don’t think so that we have to buy their paid plan. I think we can make different gmail IDs for different files. It seems stupid but we can make gmail IDs like this… Sham.pdf.files@ gmail.com Sham.doc.files@ gmail.com Sham.apk.files@ gmail.comIt kinda stupid but give it a try or go buy the paid storage plan for your files. I mean if you can pay then why not use paid plan? Its not that bad! You know risk it to get a biscuit. Well let me share you some trusted and free online storage services. 1. Skydrive *.Owned by Microsoft *.It offers free storage plan of 7GB for personal use. *.It is also integrated into the new Microsoft Office Suite 2013 where you can directly save your document to the cloud. *.Paid storage plan of 20GB (20GB + 7GB free storage plan = 27GB) cost 8£/yr *.50GB (57GB) cost 19£/yr while 100GB (107GB actual) cost 37£/yr. 2. Google Drive *.It offers 5GB of free storage plan *.This STaaS is owned by Google *.It offers 5GB of free storage plan *.Ability to share files with the public (including people who are not even registered on Google). *.25GB paid storage plan cost $ 2.49/month. *.100GB cost $ 4.99/month. *.Storage plan of up to 16TG is available on this host. 3. Ubuntu One *.OS Ubuntu is the owner of this STaaS. *.It offers a 5GB free storage plan. *.500MB addition per referral (of up to 20GB) *.Free 6 month music streaming on purchase of any track from the music store. 4. box *.It offers 5GB free file storage plan *.Sharing of files with the public. *.Paid plan can be either Business or Enterprise which offers various levels of features

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Kingston: Behold the 1-terabyte flash drive

5 Apps to Use Android as Webcam on PC

How to Use an Android Phone As a Webcam For PC [Windows & Linux].

1. Use your android phone as webcam using Wifi.

2. Use your android phone as webcam using USB.

Download whatsApp for Windows

Top Trusted Online File Storage for You

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