By Published on

Timelapse with an esp32-cam

I was intrigued by this camera which cost 9$ (with shipping cost), and Rui Santos video (Randomnerdtutorials) so I decided to buy it.

After testing it, i let it aside, and when I wanted to show it at my workshop at LabSud, it didn't works.

I discover that you need to have a good power supply to make it works.
If it isn't well powered, the esp32 will not start or the image will have weird lines.
 
You can find sketchs for it directly inside the Arduino software (when you add ESP32 support)

Here is a tutorial on how to upload a sketch on it : https://randomnerdtutorials.com/esp32-cam-video-streaming-face-recognition-arduino-ide/
 
You need
Credits: RandomNerdTutorials.com
Randomnerdtutorials.com

Arduino Settings

--> ESP32 Wrover in Board 
--> Huge App (3MB No OTA) in Partition Scheme
--> Open ESP32 examples --> Camera --> CameraWebServer
Credits : Randomnerdtutorials.com
Randomnerdtutorials.com
I had a lot of failed upload, probably due to a bad power supply.
A computer USB probably doesn't deliver not enough to power it, but if you retry enough it should works (Obviously it should work better if you use an external power supply) 
 
Here is how the interface looks like, you should even be able to use face recognition, but I didn't manage to make it works.
Randomnerdtutorials.com
My goal was to make timelapse, so I needed to find a way to correctly power my esp32cam.
 
First I used my FTDI programmer, but it overheat, bad idea!
Looking around, I found Lipo charger module (TP4056).
Near the micro USB, there are a + / - which supply 5v, the ESP32-cam can takes 5v (which is convert to 3.3v)
Unfortunately , I forgot to change the VCC cable from 3.3v to 5v.
Thankfully, it didn't damage my board.
 
Since I won't use a Lipo battery, I will change it with an USB module
In order to get the images and save it on my google Drive, I used my media center Raspberry Pi which have motionEye.
 
I added the ESP32 cam stream (http://192.168.x.x:81/stream) on it.