How to turn an old smartphone into a security camera

There is no need for an old smart­phone to lie idle. It can take on a new life as a secu­ri­ty cam­era.

Any smart­phone “from birth” has all the nec­es­sary hard­ware char­ac­ter­is­tics nec­es­sary to turn into a pow­er­ful secu­ri­ty sys­tem. In addi­tion to the cam­era itself, it has an accelerom­e­ter that can detect move­ment and vibra­tion. The micro­phone can hear noise, and the light sen­sor can respond to changes in light. Even a pow­er out­age can be a sign of unwant­ed activ­i­ty.

It only takes the right app to turn your smart­phone into a secu­ri­ty sys­tem. One of the best options is Haven. The app was devel­oped by non-prof­it orga­ni­za­tions Free­dom of the Press Foun­da­tion (FPF) and Guardian Project specif­i­cal­ly for inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ists, human rights activists and oth­er peo­ple at risk. The appli­ca­tion has open source and is guar­an­teed not to spy on users for the ben­e­fit of third par­ties.

Noti­fi­ca­tions about unwant­ed activ­i­ty can be dis­played in the mes­sen­ger, sent to a secure cloud, or stored in the phone’s mem­o­ry.

The Haven app is cur­rent­ly only avail­able for Android. You can down­load it from project pages on Githubor from the Google Play store.