Hacker News Reader

Comment by callumprentice | Hacker News Reader

I use the Camo software that turns my phone into a webcam and the quality is astounding but it still suffers from the "appear to be looking elsewhere" issue.

I have sketched out a design for a bracket that dangles your phone upside down, in front of the screen and turns the phone front camera into a webcam that's much closer to where you are typically looking.

The interesting bit is that software on the phone displays the part of the monitor that's covered and creates a "seamless display experience" (slightly tongue in cheek).

Not perfect by any means but maybe worth creating a prototype of both hardware and software to see how it feels?

View on HN

The hardware exists - PlexiCam (https://www.amazon.com/PlexiCam-Pro-Position-Anywhere-Deskto...)

I use https://snakeclamp.com/ - you can build a custom arm setup. I use a magsafe attachment and mount a phone running Camo on it. Works wonderfully and easy to move out of the way when it's blocking my screen.

Edit: Sorry didn't see the part about the part that projects your screen portion to the area that is occluded. That seems interesting but not sure how that would actually work...

Thanks for the links - I was actually looking for a new Camo stand and those look handy.

The idea is that the desktop would send the content of the rectangle occluded by the phone screen and the phone displays it, appropriately tweaked, tinted etc. I have no idea if it would work well enough to be useful but seems like a fun experiment.

I find myself using the Camo setup with the phone in front of the screen and I just "look around it" - I dislike the "looking into space" on calls more than the inconvenience of moving my windows a bit I guess.

This is also a great way to not pick up your phone too many times an hour.

I have Camo and used to use it that way. And latest MacOS has it more or less "built in" (mostly less, but it's there). I like a couple different magsafe "Continuity Cam" mounts for the last couple versions of iPhone + iOS:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0B722VBX1/

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0B5S7X6BN/

But, seconding PlexiCam.

The L clamps' cutout works with most any screw-in tripod mount.

If you get the PlexiCam Road Warrior Mini, you get two clamps and a miniature battery pack fill light:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0C164VQ43/

I find these work well with Logi Brio 4K + Xsplit Vcam, or, with Lumina which has all the autoframing and soft bokeh you could want (far better than what's built into most web conf platforms):

https://www.logitech.com/en-us/products/webcams/brio-4k-hdr-...

https://www.xsplit.com/vcam

https://getlumina.com/

The other new thing to solve eye contact is Elgato's miniature teleprompter:

https://www.elgato.com/us/en/p/prompter

Thanks for all that info and the links. Much appreciated.

Some of the things I considered:

* Connecting wirelessly to the computer would be ideal. Camo and Apple's own Continuity Camera do this so it's certainly possible

* There should be a computer companion app that lets you tweak the position of the monitor segment displayed on the phone screen - both for position, offset, color, temperature etc.

* There would be a parallax effect, even with how thin today's phones are - I wonder if you could correct for that in the phone app and make it appear to be on the same plane.

* Should it hand upside down from the top of the computer/laptop screen via a (magnetic?) widget or allow for positioning with a tall, skinny phone stand on the desktop in front of the monitor? Ideally both I guess.. Even left/right side if that made the engineering easier.

Agreed, eye height is critical and hard to ignore once experienced.

Please make and sell this!!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com