Last week, my son and I were browsing American Science and Surplus and came across the ToolSmart WiFi Flashlight Inspection Camera for just $17.95 – with the disclaimer that the app for said flashlight is no longer available on the Apple and Android app stores.
Not to be deterred from my pursuit of useless IoT hardware, I of course had to buy this flashlight.
The easy way out – shady APKs?
With some Googling, one can find downloadable APKs of the Android app on random Totally Credible Websites of Questionable Legality.
This didn’t appeal to me, because downloading abandoned APKs from random websites seems like an amazing way to wind up with a hacked phone.
Plus, the screenshots I could find of the app looked terrible, and what’s the fun in owning a WiFi enabled Smart Flashlight® if you can’t, say, connect it to Home Assistant? I mean, really, who doesn’t want their flashlight to be connected to Home Assistant?
Getting it set up for WiFi
Once the device arrived, I was able to get it connected to power by unscrewing the lid and connecting the provided USB cable to a power source. Then, I pressed the blue WiFi button on the front of the flashlight and a blue light began blinking.
At this point, a new open WiFi network appeared called “IP BoreScope”. For some reason, I couldn’t connect to it from my Mac, but my Android phone connected to it with no problem.
After connecting, I was dropped onto a network and given the IP address 192.168.200.100. Based on that, I popped 192.168.200.1 into my browser and discovered: there’s a webapp!
After guessing the default username password (admin/admin) I was in!
Now this looks promising.
Tapping Wireless Settings, then WiFi List, results in a screen where you can choose a WiFi network and enter the password. I did that, the webapp said “Rebooting…”, and in a few seconds it was on my network!
Connecting to the camera
Once it was on the network and accessible locally, I could access the webapp, which can be used to view the feed from the camera directly and set some parameters.
(At this point, I have the lid of the flashlight half removed which is why there’s a weird fisheye effect on the image.)
Viewing a live feed via browser
The camera runs a second web server (by default, on port 8080, but this is configurable from the first web server) that provides a live feed of the camera through the browser.
So, for example, if your flashlight’s IP is 192.168.20.161, the URL to access the video feed directly is:
http://192.168.20.161:8080
In lieu of an app, this is the easiest way to use the flashlight for its intended home-improvement applications – just open up the feed on your phone in one hand, and use the flashlight to scope out your attic or crawlspace in the other.
One note, though – the device does not appear to support any kind of actual video streaming. Instead, the web app is using client-side JavaScript to make continuous AJAX requests for still pictures to the snapshot API below, effectively mimicking a stream.
Capturing a snapshot
To capture a snapshot, we can access this URL (replace the IP address with the IP of the device on your network):
http://192.168.20.161:8080/?action=snapshot&n=14
The camera will return a still JPEG capture, as demonstrated in the great flashlight selfie captured above.
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