Ever since the world has ended and all of my meetings with people are online over video, I needed a web cam.
I have webcams on my laptops, but I prefer sitting at my desktop, in my nice swively chair with my two monitors. It would be nice to have a webcam there, but they are very expensive lately. So a few months ago I started using my old phone as a webcam using this app, which has worked well for me. At the beginning it was rough since my phone kept falling over, but eventually I clamped it to the back of my side monitor, with a woodworking F clamp. The massive downside here was that it was on my side monitor, so I had to look on that monitor to avoid looking like I’m not paying any attention at all when talking to people.
I thought about it for a bit, and I realized something - I have some longer bolts that fit into my primary monitor’s VESA mounting holes! So I took a piece of half inch plywood, which in today’s economy is worth roughly six million dollars, and rather than sell my plywood (and buy a proper webcam, as well as a new house), I drilled two holes in it and bolted it to the back of my monitor. I then put some command strip velcro (I will not say hook and loop 😤 on the back of the plywood, and attached my phone to the velcro (it already had velcro on it from when I used it as a light switch for my wifi lights).
Anyway this has worked very well, I can now look straight at my main monitor, and nobody will ever see the ridiculous piece of plywood I bolted to the back of my monitor. This has been a massive cost saver - rather than buying a $75 webcam I instead used a $20 saw, two bolts out of a 400 pack that cost me $15, and 156 bitcoin worth of plywood, which is, what, a couple cents?