CH 1
Be right back
A card for when you step away. Your words, your colours, your name tag.
joy.cam
Your webcam, playing anything.
A thumb-sized board every computer sees as a real webcam. You pick what it shows, from any browser.
It is a real camera.
Plug it into any computer and it appears in the camera list next to the built-in one, under the name you gave it. Zoom, Meet, Teams, OBS and the camera app see a USB webcam, because that is what it is. Nothing is installed on the computer.
- Shows up as
- Any name you choose, e.g. “Desk Cam”
- Picture
- USB Video Class, MJPEG, up to 1280×720
- Sound
- A USB microphone beside it, with its own source
- Driver
- None. Windows, macOS and Linux ship one
- Connection
- 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi to joy.cam, TLS only
NO SIGNAL
Change the channel. Mid-call.
Scroll, or press a key on the remote. The tile in the red frame is a joy.cam: the other three people only ever see a webcam.
A sample call: the three people are illustrations. The joy.cam tile plays real output from joy.cam's renderer.
Tonight on your camera.
Every channel renders at exactly the size the call opened, and only while somebody is watching.
CH 2
Breaking news
A headline, a running ticker, a LIVE bug and a clock.
CH 3
Desk clock
Any time zone, always right, down to the second.
CH 4
Starting soon
A live countdown to the minute you go on.
CH 5
Ambient
A slow gradient and one line of text.
youtube.com/watch?v=…Any link
CH 6
YouTube TV
Paste a link. The camera plays it and loops it, sound on the microphone.
clip.mp4 · photo.jpg · loop.gifYours
CH 7
Your uploads
A video, a GIF or a picture, fitted to whatever size the call asked for.
screen · tab · phone camera · whiteboardLive
CH 8
Live from a browser
Share a screen, point a phone camera, type a line, draw on a whiteboard.
CH 9
Test signal
Colour bars and a running timecode, for checking a setup.
Sound has its own dial: the picture can be a card while the microphone plays a song, another video's soundtrack or your real voice.
Two parts and a browser.
No soldering, no app. A board, a data cable, and Chrome or Edge on any computer for the one-time setup.
An ESP32-S3 Mini
Any S3 with a native USB-C port and 4 MB flash: Mini, Zero or SuperMini. The ones with 2 MB PSRAM (most of them) add 720p.
A USB-C data cable
A short one keeps the board tucked behind the screen. A charge-only cable is the usual reason a board is "not seen".
- Pick what it shows. Every template previews live before the board exists.
- Flash it from the page. One write over USB: firmware, your Wi-Fi and its identity together. The Wi-Fi password never leaves your browser.
- Plug it into any computer. It is on air. Firmware updates arrive over Wi-Fi.
Chrome or Edge, once
Web Serial does the flashing. After that, any browser on any device, phone included, runs the camera.
What it will not do
- It has no lens: it shows what you send it, not the room it sits in.
- It needs 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi; the S3 has no 5 GHz radio.
- It will not pretend to be another brand's camera. The name is yours to choose, the USB ids stay honest.
- It plays what you have the right to show. Stock clips are free to use, credited in your dashboard.
As an Amazon Associate joy.cam earns from qualifying purchases; other store links may pay a small commission at no cost to you.
Channel 0 is yours.
Put your name on it and pick the first thing it shows. It is waiting in the setup when you get there.
CH 00
Desk Cam