Since Raspberry Pi's are no longer in my price range, I was looking for a cheaper, more accessible and maybe less power-hungry solution for video monitoring and recording. I got an ESP32-CAM board from Reichelt for about 11 EUR and used the Arduino IDE to program it with a video server demo program. After a day of troubleshooting I got it to work. If you run the VMFB on 5V, it can use the VCC and GND breakouts on the new PCB to power the camera.

These boards have a number of GPIO's but just a few that are not in use when an SD-card is present. I plan on using just one right now to connect to the monitor/control breakouts on the PCB so the PIR can trigger video streaming and/or recording. The inputs are not 5-volt tolerant, so I'll need to use a 3.3V zener on the low-current PIR power rail. The one I have runs from 3-5V, so in theory it should work. Will still test the output first to see that those extra volts won't make it to the ESP32 on power-up.

I've only just got the streaming server to work, so I still have some work to do to set up the GPIO triggers and make it sleep the rest of the time.

I also have some wide-angle camera modules on the way from Aliexpress. If this all works out I think it's a great way to add some video and remote control/monitoring to this project.