How To Setup Laptop Camera To Record House

How to turn your laptop into a dwelling security system

(Image credit: Phillip Tracy/Laptop Mag)

With one of a half-dozen costless programs, you can use your laptop to monitor your living infinite through its built-in camera. Most programs are costless but simplistic. For avant-garde functionality, you can pay for additional features from the likes of Yawcam (what we're using today), iSpy, SecuritySpy, and others.

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

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How to turn your laptop into a home security arrangement

Before nosotros begin, there'south some setup nosotros'll accept to do to our laptop's power saver settings. This keeps the laptop webcam from shutting off and provides an always-on interface to monitor our dwelling house surroundings. Nosotros're going to save power still by dimming our screen until information technology goes dark, and only waking the webcam with motion — one of Yawcam's settings.

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

2. Click Power & sleep settings.

iii. Choose Never from the dropdown that controls power while plugged in.

Setup

From here, nosotros can start setting up the software and testing our abode security photographic camera.

1. Download Yawcam and install the programme.

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

iii. Navigate to Device > Alter to and select integrated photographic camera.

4. Choose how yous'd similar 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.