Added on 2020/11/12 It seems that the droidcam client has been upgraded from 1.5 to 1.6 around 2020/11/05, and the installation procedure has changed. Therefore, please be aware that some of the following statements do not match the current situation.

Since the old notebook PC (FMV-BIBLO MG70W) does not have a camera, I searched for an iPad or Android that I was not using as a camera, and found an app called droidcam, so I introduced it.

material

--PC: FMV-BIBLO MG70W (hereinafter, PC) + Ubuntu18.04LTS --Camera: iPad (3rd generation) (Specs) --App: droidcam (Official Site)

Video

Since droidcam is used in the form of a smartphone / iPad with a camera as a server and a PC as a client, it is necessary to install the application on both sides.

Camera side

iOS apps and Android apps are provided in their respective stores, so be honest with them. In the free version state, you can not change the resolution or zoom, but this time the purpose is to be able to handle images on a PC without a webcam, so we will keep the free version.

When you start the app, the IP address and port number on the iPad side will be displayed. The camera can be used on both the front and back.

PC side

Get and install the app according to Official site description. The Linux version module is provided only for the 64-bit version, and it seems that you need to compile it yourself for 32-bit. 64bit was good.

cd /tmp/
wget https://files.dev47apps.net/linux/droidcam_latest.zip
echo "952d57a48f991921fc424ca29c8e3d09 droidcam_latest.zip" | md5sum -c --

unzip droidcam_latest.zip -d droidcam && cd droidcam
sudo ./install

In some cases it seems that I'm stumbling here, but fortunately (for unknown reasons) the installation ended without stumbling.

So start.

$ droidcam

Then a window like the one below will open. Enter the IP address and port number of the camera and press Connect.

When I started Zoom for confirmation and opened [Setting] → [Video], the image from the camera was displayed.

When I had a zoom meeting in this state, the video through the droidcam was properly shown on the other side, so I found that it went well (^^)

In addition, it looks like this except for zoom.

--Cheese: I was able to take pictures and record videos. --skype: Reflected --VLC: 3.0.11 caused an error when opening with a capture device, but 3.0.8-0ubuntu18.04.1 did not cause an error.

So it seems that it can be used well other than zoom.

Addition (2020/11/09) When I connected the PC-iPad via USB and tried droidcam (with Wifi turned off), it also connected without any trouble.

voice

Up to the above, only video is transferred, but audio can also be transferred, so the following was executed according to the description on the official website.

$ sudo ./install-sound

Since the installation was completed successfully, I reconnected from PC to iPad and checked with Zoom, but the image of the iPad camera was transferred to the PC side, but the sound through the iPad microphone was not recognized (microphone) Volume indicator did not work)

So when I opened Settings> Sounds to check the status of my device, I saw what I thought was added by this installation.

Previously, nothing was displayed when the microphones were not connected, so I thought that the "analog input" displayed this time was the audio input of droidcam. However, no matter how much you call the camera (iPad) side, the input level indicator does not make a slight movement.

I tried connecting it to my smartphone (Android) with droidcam, but the situation of video OK and audio NG did not change, so I thought that the problem was likely to be on the PC side and wandered around the Web.

As a result, I found that some people were worried about the same thing, and installing droidcam sound sometimes caused the device settings and definitions related to audio to go wrong, but it was due to droidcam or the OS. I couldn't understand what it was.

Also, as a countermeasure, after starting droidcam on the PC side, when the following pacmd ~ is executed, "droidcam_audio" has been added to the input device.

$ droidcam &
$ pacmd load-module module-alsa-source device=hw:Loopback,1,0 source_properties=device.description=droidcam_audio

If you connect to the camera side with this added droidcam_audio selected, the sound on the camera side will be recognized on the PC side. However, it seems that this action (pacmd) needs to be executed every time the PC is restarted (although there is probably a way to make it persistent).

Well, when zooming using droidcam, the microphone and speaker use headphones = the microphone on the camera side is not used, so I think that there is virtually no effect even if you do not transfer audio with droidcam. Other than zoom, it's an idea ...

In any case, it's a bit unpleasant that weird information remains in this sound (it exists not only in the input but also in the output), but at present, the built-in speaker, terminal, and USB-connected earphones and microphones are working properly. .. I don't want to remove this trash and spread the bad effects, so I'll leave it as it is for now.

It feels bad.

Register with launcher

It's not beautiful to type commands from the terminal every time, so I imitated the footprints of the ancestors and registered a shortcut in the launcher.

~.local/share/applications/droidcam.desktop

[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Type=Application
Name=droidCam
Comment=Your smartphone or iPad will become your PC's webcam
Exec=droidcam
Icon=droidcam
Path=/usr/bin
Terminal=false
StartupNotify=false

~.local/share/icons/droidcam.png Save the image file as an icon in the above location and name.

You can now launch it from View Application.

Miscellaneous feelings

――It was good to be able to use the iPad, which is as old as a PC and is worried about how to use it. ――The battery consumption of droidcam on the camera side is high, so I want you to improve it. ――I looked at the information around the sound device to erase the dust, but it was too difficult and I was dizzy.

Make it possible to handle the camera with old notebook + Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (droidcam)