Apps / Android security cameraBeta

An old phone, always watching.

Name: Perch
Author: Tenziki Studio

Turn an old Android phone into an always-on security camera: live view in any browser, on-device face and motion detection, automatic Google Drive backup. No subscription, no cloud.

View on GitHub ↗All apps

What it does

Perch

01
Records with the screen off
A foreground service holds the camera, a CPU wake lock and a Wi-Fi lock. Video is cut into 5 to 30 minute segments, so a crash never costs more than one chunk.
02
Live view in any browser
WebRTC from the phone to a MediaMTX server you run, then to the viewer, with face boxes and a motion badge drawn from real detections.
03
Detection on the phone
Google ML Kit face detection and frame-differencing motion detection, with alert cooldowns and optional push notifications. Nothing leaves the phone to be analysed.
04
Backs up to your Drive
Uploads over Wi-Fi by default, with real sign-in checks and a notification if access is revoked or Drive is full. Perch can only see the files it created.
05
Never fills the phone
Local recordings are capped at 8 GB by default. When the cap is hit, already-backed-up footage goes first, then the oldest unbacked-up footage.
06
Looks after the hardware
Above 45 °C it drops to 720p, scans less often and slows the stream, then recovers below 41 °C. If another app grabs the camera, Perch notices and re-binds.

Under the hood

Phone app: Kotlin and Jetpack Compose, Android 8.0 and newer; CameraX, ML Kit, WorkManager, SQLite
Web viewer: React 19, TypeScript, Vite and Tailwind; talks to the phone over a token-protected API
Recording: Segmented MP4 at 720p, 1080p or 4K; about 6 Mbps at 1080p
Remote controls: Flashlight, siren, flip camera and video quality from the viewer; off by default
Tests: 267 automated tests plus a manual pass on a Pixel 10a running Android 16
Licence: PolyForm Noncommercial 1.0.0; commercial licences available from the author

Try it