Cheap Wi-Fi IP Surveillance Camera (Very little DIY needed)

This camera uses ESP32 camera module, it can be programmed via Arduino IDE just like Arduino. You can even connect other devices to it, like sensors, displays, relays and much more (you'll need some Arduino coding skills for that).
Although it can work without any programming, I recommend to flash it with my modified code (or use code from Arduino IDE examples).

[guardianobserver]

Incredible how much cheaper have electronics become. When young I was travelling kilometers with bus to the electronic shop to find one by one all the components for my constructions. .

[s.anderson]

Greetings, this is your first video that crossed my feed, looking for a quick reference to this kind of cam board, and it is excellent.
I am a software engineer with a BSEE from the 1990's and with a lot of background teaching science subjects.
I just looked over your channel, and you are experimenting in much the same way I was experimenting in the 1980's.
Of course you have such amazingly more advanced things to tinker with 40 years later than I did.

I would ask this on behalf of those who will learn from what you do - share your mistakes, and share the things you learn about how what you make does not work in the way you expected. You may look upon them as silly mistakes, or even embarrassing, but I assure you that you are learning and growing, we do so by making mistakes, and by sharing them we help others learn and grow.

Of course you know there will always be trolls in social media, but you have adapted to that, I expect, with your channel as it is now. Sharing mistakes opens you up to people who like to be mean just for the sake of being mean. However, it also opens you up to people who will have different questions about similar issues. You'll never save everyone from the mistakes you make, you can only help those who find your content here.

I observe there are at least 2 valuable lessons you learned here, probably more, but you skipped over them, AFTER the fact, one will seem obvious, the other maybe not so much. I'll bet there are more that I am not even realizing.

The first would be why you decided to paint much of the glass black - share why you made that change. In retrospect it probably seems so obvious, but others who watch what you did will learn when you share the reasoning behind the design change.

The second would probably be why we didn't see how that larger LED worked at night. It's a big challenge to illuminate a wide field of view meaningfully at night.

My tinkering with these will be to use some dental picks to (very carefully) remove the IR filter (probably under a microscope) and see how well these can work with IR illumination at night. I am thinking I may need to simply add lenses to narrow the field of view to match an IR module's beam. A reach goal would be to add an IR filter option back into the optical path using a solenoid of some kind.

Again, you seem to be doing some excellent experiments. Have fun with it, and share also the things that don't work as you expected.

[vasiliynkudryavtsev]

There is actually a complementary board with microUSB connector and USB-UART IC. It can be used to program multiple boards or use as is, USB powered.

[harleyrdr]

3:51 - The intended purpose of that white LED is to be used as a flash-bulb. So that's why it is unlimited and really bright. I have no idea how to set that up, but that's what I read about it.

[jeremymorrison]

Well done! Gave me a ton of ideas. I was worried a project like this may be too much for me, but now I'm fairly confident. Gracias Amigo.

[PeterRichardsandYoureNot]

Might want to describe why you are soldering a capacitor on back of the unit when you are assembling. Not much help to randomly do something and not explain it.

[czthor]

Good job it preforms really well. you could use IR led purple so people would not see white light.

[okolepuka]

I think I saw Borat walking home on the street, VERY NIIICE!

[JoelSwensenM]

Wow I was not expecting the picture to be so good

[davidyusaku]

Yooo i'm so glad this video comes up in my recommendation
Thanks man

[kinangeagle]

How the hell did you get up that tree?

[freekycheese]

Great, did you run from a battery? Any info on how long it lasted if so?

[acestudioscouk-Ace-GACE]

This answered a lot of my questions about ESP32 Cam, thanks.

[stylesoftware]

I've used those small buck converters with ESP32, and they fail to give the full 500ma required by wifi and processing. You'll get wifi drop outs and unusual problems. You will be better off with the usual larger aliexpress usual 2amp module.

[TheKaos]

Interesting idea for paranoids.

With a little more setup, you can likely wire it up to the doorbell, and when someone rings it, you get a picture over whatsapp showing who rang the door

[sonnikdoh]

As a professional surveillance installer there are 2 things that drives me insane.... "wireless" and "cloud based". I give estimates to people for installing cameras and they wonder why it cost so much. I tell them the labor for running wire to this location is the issue. "Why don't you use wireless?"

I tell them sure we can get a wireless camera there and hope the connection is constant and doesn't drop out when you need it to record an incident. But it will cost more money because I still have to run a wire there for Wireless power is not a thing, solar.... (very rare to find an ideal location for solar) again I hope we don't lose power when you need it.... Batteries?.... you want me to come back every so often and charge you to climb up on a ladder to change out a battery?

"Cloud Based System" you're basically renting your system. The NVR's and DVR's of today are equipped with this neat feature called a WAN port... you can view remotely and backup to a offsite NAS aka 'the cloud' and guess what.... you own it.

[mateusmartinslus]

I live in a tough neighborhood, that's will help me to get alert of everything happens here hahaha thanks man

[connecticutaggie]

There is also a more expensive one with a USB port included (ESP-EYE). I have one of those too which makes development a lot easier. I then use the cheaper ones for deployment.

[AndreVanKammen]

Thanks Youtube for reminding me. I bought this last year but when it arrived I had other stuff to do and forgot about it :)

[aaronag]

Outstanding tutorial video. Perfect for monitoring my wild bird feeder and running opencv against identifying the birds. Also helpful to help with identifying what animals visit my garden. I know a fox keeps playing with our rubber garden shoes, as they are not by the door each morning and have teeth marks all over them lol but never managed to video it happening. Thanks.