ESP32 is capable of functioning reliably in industrial environments, with operating temperatures ranging from –40°C to +125°C. Also, it achieves ultra-low power consumption which is good for our purpose, a wireless security camera! As a development board, I chose ESP32CAM which is a tiny module based on ESP32 chip and OV2640. The reason why I chose ESP32CAM is that it is cheap and very versatile. So to reduce the power consumption, I disconnect the onboard flash and disabled WiFi, Bluetooth modules. The only thing that I added is an 8GB SD card for camera images. I also lowered the image quality to VGA, with RGB colors. By doing that I reduced the image size to 15KB which is great for our purpose! If my calculations are correct we can fit approximately 500k photos. For indexing and file name, I used EEPROM bit operations to increment the current photo index, so clients can search through photo indexes to find what they are looking for. In the end, I 3D printed chassis for the ESP32CAM module to make it water and heat resistant.
You can identify thieves or make a video about your newly sprouted seed's growth! 🌱
📌 I tested ESP32CAM to take a photo of my parent's car every second for security reasons and over 20 thousand photos, there are no errors!
These instructions will get you a copy of the project up and running on your development board:
Step 1) Download Arduino IDE
Step 2) Download ESP32 Core for IDE
Step 3) Compile the given code
Step 4) Connect the camera module to ESP32
Step 5) Plug 5V adaptor or 3.3V LiPo Battery to ESP32
Now you are ready to go! If you use stock values, ESP32 will take photo of every 3(adjustable) seconds.
1 x ESP32CAM module with OV2640
1 x 5V 2A adaptor or 3.3V LiPo battery
1 x USB Cable (to upload the code)
2 x Heatsink (Optional)