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ESPCAM- XIAO Powered DIY Camera

Made a DIY camera using the XIAO ESP32S4 Sense and a round OLED screen.

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the ESPCAM, an XIAO ESP32 S3 Sense and XIAO ROUND DISPLAY-based camera made from scratch.

This is a fully functioning point-and-shoot camera that displays live feed captured from the XIAO ESP32 Sense's Camera Module and displayed on the XIAO Round Screen.

When you double-tap the screen, the device will capture an image and save it to the SD card.

We have 3D printed the body from transparent and white PLA.

The framerate is a little slow, but this is a fully functional camera powered by an ESP32, so it is all justified.

XIAO ROUND DISPLAY

For this project, we're using the Seeed Studio Round Display for XIAO.

Seeed Studio Round Display for XIAO is an extension board with capacitive touch screen and is compatible with all XIAO development boards. It features a fully covered touch screen on one side, designed as a radiant disc with a radius of 39 mm.

With a 1.28-inch circular touch screen that has a resolution of 240 x 240 pixels and 65K colors, this board presents an exhibition of clear and colorful images. It can be applied to design a programmable watch, wearable indicator, etc.

The high integration and rich peripherals on the other side of the XIAO extension board are impressive, with an onboard RTC, TF card slot, battery charging chip, and JST 1.25 battery interface, all within a compact 39 x 39mm size. That is, you can have reliable timekeeping, a way to extend memory up to 32GB FAT, a charging method by the lithium battery.

The pins for Seeed Studio XIAO are all led out and no soldering is needed, which offers a convenient development experience. With its mini size, the XIAO extension board is ideal for wearable and small-volume projects. It is a versatile and powerful extension board that can be used for a wide range of projects, from displaying sensor data to creating interactive interfaces.

As for setting up this round display, we have to use TFT_eSPI Library.

We need to edit the User Setup and modify User_Setup_Select.h file and uncomment the following line.

#include <User_Setups/Setup66_Seeed_XIAO_RoundDisplay.h>

Check out the wiki of this display for more brief details.

https://wiki.seeedstudio.com/get_start_round_display/

XIAO ESP32 S3 Sense Board

The Seeed Studio XIAO Series is a tiny development board with a thumb-sized size and a comparable hardware design.

We're using the XIAO ESP32 S3 Sense board that integrates a camera sensor, digital microphone, and SD card support. Combining embedded ML computing power and photography capability, this development board can be a great tool to get started with intelligent voice and vision AI.

Here, the ESP32S3 32-bit, dual-core Xtensa processor chip operating up to 240 MHz is being used in the XIAO.

Furthermore, there is a detachable OV2640 camera sensor for 1600x1200 resolution, which is compatible with the OV5640 camera sensor and includes an additional digital microphone.

The onboard lithium battery charge management setup enables four power consumption models, including deep sleep mode, with power consumption as low as 14 μA.

There's a brief wiki documentation of the XIAO Board, along with many of the products you can checkout from here to get in-depth details.

https://wiki.seeedstudio.com/xiao_esp32s3_getting_started/

Modification

The XIAO EPS32S3 Sense is designed with three pull-up resistors (R4~R6) connected to the SD card slot, and the round display also has pull-up resistors;

The issue here is that the SD card cannot be read when both are used at the same time. To rectify this issue, we need to cut off J3 on the XIAO ESP32S3 Sense expansion board.

After disconnecting J3, the SD card slot on the XIAO ESP32S3 Sense will not work properly, so you need to insert a microSD card into the SD card slot on the Round Display.

CODE

After doing the modifications on the camera board of XIAO, we next uploaded the below sketch to the XIAO Board.

#include <EEPROM.h>
#include <Arduino.h>
#include <TFT_eSPI.h>
#include <SPI.h>
#include "esp_camera.h"
#include "FS.h"
#include "SD.h"
#include "SPI.h"

#define CAMERA_MODEL_XIAO_ESP32S3 // Has PSRAM
#define TOUCH_INT D7

#include "camera_pins.h"

// Width and height of round display
const int camera_width = 240;
const int camera_height = 240;

// File Counter
int imageCount = 1;
bool camera_sign = false;          // Check camera status
bool sd_sign = false;              // Check sd status

TFT_eSPI tft = TFT_eSPI();

// SD card write file
void writeFile...
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ROUND OLED v8.step

step - 712.04 kB - 06/12/2024 at 05:34

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ROUND OLED v7.f3d

fusion - 1.97 MB - 06/12/2024 at 05:34

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BACK.stl

Standard Tesselated Geometry - 249.11 kB - 06/12/2024 at 05:34

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FRONT.stl

Standard Tesselated Geometry - 228.60 kB - 06/12/2024 at 05:34

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  • 1
    Assembly Process
    • We begin the main assembly by installing the XIAO Round Display and XIAO ESP32 Sense Board inside the Back Enclosure Part. The round display fits perfectly in its place.
    • Next, we connected the front enclosure to the back enclosure part, and they both fit perfectly together thanks to the tolerance we gave between them, allowing both parts to press fit together.

    The assembly is now complete.

  • 2
    Result

    Here's the result of this small build: a working point-and-shoot camera being driven by an ESP32 microcontroller. How cool is that?!.

    To turn on the camera, flip on the SMD Slide switch on the Round Display.

    By tapping the screen, we are able to save images to the SD card.

    Overall, the project was a success. I am pretty happy with the results.

    Leave a comment if you need any help regarding this project. This is it for today, folks.

    Thanks to Seeed Studio for supporting this project.

    You guys can check them out if you need great PCB and stencil service for less cost and great quality.

    And I'll be back with a new project pretty soon!

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