mobile phones as security cameras

[donkey]

this project is for a friend.
he has found on ebay a bulk lot of old mobile phones (no info on models as yet) and he was wondering how hard it would be to use them as security cameras. all have bluetooth, and he was wondering if there was anyway to connect them to a hub.
my theory is this would require the phone software to be altered and they would have to be connected via wires due to the limitations of bluetooth both in speed and range.
anyone got any ideas.
the other option he has is to unsolder the cameras and use them as stand alone.

 

[Stupidspencer]

I like projects like this, but I'm gonna go ahead and say its probably more trouble than its worth. For one, I believe NO security camera should be wireless unless the data transmission is encrypted. The reason I say this is that normal wireless camera signals can be intercepted by anybody with a standard wireless camera receiver and used against you! The bluetooth protocol does encrypt, but not well. And you are gonna need somebody who is really good at programming in Java to overwrite the phones' OS with custom software that will output the video feed through the bluetooth.
Already sound like too much?
Even if you get this far, bluetooth is not designed to stream video, so you'll probably only get 1 frame every second- I dont know, but it wont be anywhere near 30fps.
Then you've got the issue of powering these things. You're gonna have to have each one on a charger at all times and some motorola phones use more power than the charger can give it, so these ones are out of the question.

Anyway, if you go ahead with it, good luck. Sorry I dont have any advise you want to hear.

 

[donkey]

I thought about all that. was hoping to give him news like just attach two wires at point a and b and you got a free camera. but oh well

 

[jackorocko]

I thought about all that. was hoping to give him news like just attach two wires at point a and b and you got a free camera. but oh well

I have to laugh, lol. Anyway, if it was as easy as attaching two wires and viola, security camera system, then wouldn't everyone else already thought of it?

First question that always crosses my mind when I think of something "Cool". why hasn't anyone else ever thought of it? Because something as simple as this would have found its way on eHow by now!

 

[Stupidspencer]

I thought about all that. was hoping to give him news like just attach two wires at point a and b and you got a free camera.

Well actually, this would be the case with most standard-def WEBCAMS. Most of the electronics inside them is to put the video feed into a USB data format. But the camera itself, like security cameras, has 4 wires coming from the CCD circuit: two of which are power + and - and the other two are PAL/NTSC video and-video ground. But I think on cell phones the CCD circuit is implemented into the main circuitboard of the phone to save space.
The bad thing about making things more compact is that to do so, all the circuitry gets intergrated together. If you've ever looked inside an iPhone, theres not that much there- even though the phone can do so much. Thats because all the circuitry gets condensed into ICs (microchips) to make it all fit.