Interfacing 5MP SPI Camera with ESP32 WiFi Module

Overview
This tutorial is about
Arducam Mega Camera
, as we will be interfacing this
5MP SPI Camera
with
ESP32
WiFi Module. Recently
Arducam
launched a legendary camera solution that helps you connect one or more cameras to any
microcontroller
without the least effort. It is particularly targeted for
battery-powered IoT devices
, embedded machine vision, and artificial intelligence applications. Arducam Mega Camera can work with any microcontroller with a single standard
SPI interface
. No memory is required for register settings or frame buffers. The best part is it is fully compatible with
3.3V
and
5V
systems.
In this project we will interface
5-megapixel Arducam Mega Camera
with
ESP32
Board and do the various operations including image capturing with various pixel resolutions. We will also stream some videos only with the help of the ESP32 Board. Arducam has released
Arducam Mega SDK
for Arducam Mega camera which makes the
programming
very simple. So, let’s go through this camera & its operations in detail.
Arducam Mega Camera
The Arducam Mega Camera is a legendary camera solution that helps you connect one or more cameras to any microcontroller without or the least effort. It is basically targeted for battery-powered IoT devices, embedded machine vision, and artificial intelligence applications.
Arducam Mega can work with any microcontroller with a single standard SPI interface. Only 4 pins (GPIOs) are required excluding VCC & GND. No memory is required for register settings or frame buffers. It is fully compatible with 3.3V & 5V systems. The camera can be directly used with Arduino, STM8/STM32, ESP8266/ESP32, MSP430, Nordic, Renesas & other MCU systems.
The camera is specially designed for energy-saving applications. You can completely switch off the camera when your MCU is sleeping, without worrying about loading long register settings, as it does for you instantly (less than 100 ms) and automatically. There are two versions of Arducam Mega cameras, one with 3MP(fixed focus) and the other with 5MP(autofocus). It comes with a default enclosure, you can mount it easily wherever you want.
The detail of this Camera is explained in the previous post. You can follow the
Arducam Getting Started
guide to learn each and every detail about this Camera.
Interfacing 5MP Arducam Mega Camera with NodeMCU ESP32
Now let us see how we can interface 5 megapixel SPI Camera called Arducam Mega with ESP32 Board. The connection diagram is fairly simple as shown in the image below.
Following is the connection between ESP32 Board & 5MP Arducam Mega Camera.
Camera Pin
ESP32 Board
VCC
3.3V
GND
GND
SCK

MISO

MOSI

CS

You can directly connect the Camera with ESP32 Board using the jumper wires.
Arducam Mega Library Installation
The Arducam has released the library for ESP32 Boards & other microcontrollers. The environment configuration and use is based on Arduino IDE.
Library Link:
https://github.com/ArduCAM/Arducam_Mega.git
Downloaded the library file & copy the extracted folder to the Arduino library folder.
Source Code/Program
After the library is added to the Arduino Library folder, you can use the example code from the library example to test the Camera.
We will use an example called
full_featured
to test the camera.
After selecting the example, select the ESP32 Dev Module from the Board list & then click on the upload button to upload the code to the Arduino UNO Board.
Testing the Camera
To test the Camera working we need some GUI visulization software. So download the Arducam software from the following link.
ArducamMegaSetup
After downloading, install the software on your computer.
After installation, Select the ESP32 port number, the baud rate is 921600, and click open.
Now the Camera gets connected to the visualization software. Therefore you can move the camera in different directions to see everything on GUI Screen.
You can click the image button to take a photo. You can click the close button to close the display window. You can also select the resolution & format.
Click the Video button to enable video streaming mode, the default resolution is 320X240. Click the close button to disable video streaming mode.
The
auto exposure
is enabled by default. When using manual exposure, you need to turn off the automatic exposure function.
The
auto gain
is enabled by default. When using manual gain, you need to turn off the automatic gain function.
The software has a feature for
brightness control
contrast control, EV control, saturation control, special effects control, white balance control
, and
focus control
The
autofocus control
is available on the 5MP Arducam Mega Camera. You can enable or disable this feature. Enable or disable the continuous focus function, the default is to disable the continuous focus function.
Parameter
Function
Open
Enable the focus function
SingleTime
Enable single focus
Persistent
Enable continuous focus
Stop
Pause autofocus
Close
Turn off focus
That’s all from this tutorial. This camera has the ability to empower the future of IoT as this is the best camera solution for any MCU-based, low-power IoT and embedded vision applications/systems.
Video Tutorial & Guide
Arducam Mega Camera || The Ultimate Camera for Arduino, ESP8266 & ESP32
Watch this video on YouTube