WLAN, good controller performance and a color camera, this sought-after combination was previously with the ESP 32 CAM -Module available at a very affordable price of less than ten euros. But it became difficult when flashing the program memory, because the connection had to be made using a jumper cable and a serial USB converter. The ESP 32 Camera Module from M5Stack simplifies this considerably, because it has a USB-C socket for it. All that is needed on the computer is a CP 2104 USB driver.

Power can also be supplied via the Groove connection.

Power is also supplied via this socket or optionally via a groove plug connection (socket standard HY2.0-4P) on the underside of the board.

The small board (20, 5 mm × 46, 5 mm) with pre-installed software. With their help, you can immediately access the picture recorded by the 2 megapixel camera (sensor OV 2640) with 600 × 800 look at pixels. The viewing angle is 65 °. For videos, a maximum of 5 to 6 images per second are possible with this software, although the module should be able to handle up to 60 fps. If you want to exhaust these abilities, you have to program the ESP-IDF yourself.

The price for the ESP 32 Camera Module is currently around Euro (including delivery from China).

(hgb)