Android App Review: CammyCam

A while ago I reviewed Cammy, a service that lets you remotely monitor security cameras from your phone or tablet. CammyCam takes this idea and inverts it, by turning your device itself into a security camera that can then be remotely monitored.

CammyCam is very quick to set up. Once you've downloaded and opened the app you just need to sign in or create an account, and straight away your phone can be used as a motion-sensitive camera. If nothing's going on it won't record, but as soon as something moves in its field of view the app captures it and saves the event to your account (it should be noted that moving the device itself will set off a recording just the same as something moving in front of it, so you probably want to have it set up somewhere stable).

Because the camera's only triggered when something moves, you only record things that (could potentially be) of interest, rather than hours and hours of an unmoving, empty room. This cuts down not only on storage space used, but also on the time it you have to spend looking through your footage for that one moment of thievery (or whatever it is you're trying to catch with this security camera).

There are, of course, a couple of fundamental problems with the idea of CammyCam, and I'm sure you've already thought of them yourself. First of all, it means using your phone or tablet as a security camera. That's really convenient if you don't already own a camera but do own a phone, except now you don't have your phone on you anymore because you've taped it to the wall of your office or wherever. And buying a new smartphone just to use as a security camera surely can't be as cheap as just buying a security camera. Secondly, if your house or office or wherever is under such threat from thieves and villains that you want it under video surveillance, do you really want to leave your phone there while you're not around?

Those concerns aside, I'm happy to concede that there will be situations where someone may want to use their phone as a motion-sensitive camera. And if that's the case then CammyCam is an easy, straight-forward and free way to do just that.