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So I have a project with my Raspberry Pi, and I was wondering if it were possible to tether (connect via usb or bluetooth) your Android smartphone to the Pi and receive camera input from the phone.

I basically need the Pi to "see" through my phone. It needs to stream live video.

For this project I am trying to have my phone on my RC car record as it goes along. It will send the raw video to the Pi from my phone and the Pi will interpret what it sees and control the car accordingly.

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  • Be interesting if you could :) You could try streaming the video file, but having tried transferring media files via Bluetooth you probably won't get a very high quality picture. Also due to android phone permissions etc it may be simpler to work it out on a computer first, then translate the method to work on the phone - still may require a lot of coding though, as I don't think there is a app for this.
    – Wilf
    Dec 3, 2015 at 0:46
  • Check UV4L at linux-projects.org. It offers two-way WebRTC audio/video streaming. Another option is install an MJPEG streaming server on Android and use uv4l-mjpegstream driver on the Rpi to create a virtual device which takes its input from the MJPEG stream coming from your Android phone. You ll probably need a wireless card on the Rpi or ethernet over USB.
    – prinxis
    Dec 4, 2015 at 0:20

2 Answers 2

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You can use this application on android to stream video from camera to the Raspberry Pi using http: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pas.webcam

If RPi have WiFi you can stream using WiFi but if not then you have to setup your phone to USB tethering mode.

You can download from that app HQ photo, single video frame or stream video.

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  • @MalachiBazar was my answer helpful? if yes you can accept and/or upvote it.
    – rav_kr
    Dec 8, 2015 at 10:33
  • It was good but not exactly what I was looking for. Thanks though for your input.
    – Malachi Bazar
    Dec 11, 2015 at 18:18
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Search for phones which support UVC (USB video device class) profile. When such phones are connected to USB, Android asks what kind of data you want to transmit (Mass Storage, MTP, etc.) and there's a menu entry called "Camera". Select it, and your Pi should see it as a USB webcam.

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