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How can my ungainly grandparents use their current Android and iPhones as body or action camera? They loathe to spend money buying a GoPro. They won't be underwater or adventuring any task that endangers the phone. They'll record restaurant meals, hikes, saunters.

My grandpa tried to put their phone into his shirt pocket and then recorded, but the phone fell out and on the ground! He doesn't have many shirts with shirt pockets big enough to fit the phone.

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    With a lanyard around the neck designed for the purpose. It's shopping, not a hack. Commented Mar 4, 2020 at 9:46
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    A body-cam hack ! Great question ! ! !
    – Stan
    Commented Mar 4, 2020 at 15:26

4 Answers 4

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This isn't really a lifehack per se since it's a rather simple "problem" that comes with an equally simple solution - you can buy a cheap chest harness and wear it like you would any other body mounted action cam (such as GoPro or clone).

I mean you could duck tape it to yourself or something but the cost and hassle are going to far outstrip just buying the actual tool for the job.

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Your solution is in the bag. There's nothing to buy

  • Put the cellphone into a flat plastic zip-close bag.
  • Punch a hole in the corners on either side of the top.
  • Put each end of a shoe lace or light cord through the top corner holes.
  • Wear it around your neck.
  • That's it

The bag allows the phone touch-screen to be manipulated - even while the phone's inside. While you can see through the bag well enough to use the screen, it is too thick to give a clear recorded image; so, you can cut a hole for the lens to peek through. Reinforce the hole with clear tape for resistance to tears.

Good luck.

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I've got two solutions that I think will work. Number 1 is probably the safest of the two.

Glue a strip of velcro to the phone and sew the other to a shirt. If they don't want to glue anything to the phone, glue it to a light weight phone case. I've used velcro to so many items in my life and they can hold quite a bit of weight.

The other option is to buy a phone magnet holder, like this one

enter image description here

and sew a pocket around it. They can stitch it to their shirt and it should be able to hold a phone if the fabric isn't to thick. I've used magnets in my car for many years and my phone has never fallen off. Of course, this may vary. The magnets on the marked range from really cheap to really pricy.

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I would buy a cheap plastic case and attach a string to it by putting a hole in each corner on the long side (to record in widescreen, thus matching tv and monitor playback aspect ratios - nothing worse than watching a portrait video on a landscape screen with the huge black bars), wearing the phone like a necklace.

You can actually buy such cases already, which serves to outline my point:

enter image description here

To find this I searched for "necklace case".. but of course life hacks is about rigging something up yourself than buying a pre-made solution ;)

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