Build your own Webcam
Before Corona, I was quite happy with my build-in webcam together with an additional external logitec C920HD. The logitec mainly replaced my build-in cam for my company notebook - it has a far better quality.
But now, that I am forced to do everything online, two webcams are not enough. The logitech is now mounted above some sheets of paper as a replacement for a whiteboard. For the online piano lessons of my son, I need two additioanal webcams with a special setup.
So, I need more webcams than I currently have but no additional webcams are available through online stores :-(
Time to re-think the solution!
Old Smartphones as webcam
Golem.de created a good (german) article about solutions which use smartphones as webcams.
TL;DR: EpocCam, DroidCam and ManyCam are the proposed solutions.
Raspberry Pi as webcam
Another interesting solution is to utilize one of those many raspberries I bought and never used.
Google provides tutorials for this solution:
Both tutorials are a bit different but both use the raspberry as network based camera. This means it is the same approach as with the smartphone.
For me, the main question now is, if there is a PC software / driver which is capable to use both - the smartphone and the raspberry - as a webcam.
When your Raspberry is set up and ready to go, you will find more ideas to play around with it in the official camra guide - great ressource!
Stay tuned because I will soon write about my experience…
Update: @phaus mentioned on twitter that Canon is updating their cameras to double as webcam. Maybe I should check my old cameras to see if I could use them as webcams, too!