WiFi Camera (TimelapseMe)

I've received a lot of responses from alibaba for only the chips. Such a waste of my email.

I should note that the price for RT5350 to be around $1.5 .

The cheapest module costs $6 per piece for 1000 units.

I think manufacturing a board with a BGA chip would probably cost a lot of money.

Some sellers responded with offering assembly and PCB manufacturing, so I'll decided to send over PCB files for the VoCore which uses RT5350 and is kind of the module I would want to buy, but it's expensive (20$)

VoCore has all the board files on their site (link) so I'll just send them over.

I contacted 4 sellers for the PCB and manufacturing

I also contacted sellers for the HLK-RM04 module.

Price for 100 pieces: $7.8
Price for 1000 pieces: $6.5

This seem to be the best prices for this module.

I also received a response for a different module (TOP-AP01), at $6

Link to module.

I'm also starting two new inquires. One for the linux board (like VoCore and the modules above) and one for USB linux camera.

I also found a list of similar modules on the openWRT forum (link)

I'm sceptical about finding a cheap, HD webcam, but it may be possible.
The one used on the VoCore blog (link to blog) cost $9.71 on Taobao (link to product).

Today I spent 1.5 hours on this project.

Michael commented today on this project. He suggested I take a look at a Russian website.

The website (link) mentioned something about using a USB for flashing files, so I did a bit of googling.

I found this guide.
It's written that we first need to change the bootloader then flash the new image.

Everything is nicely written so I won't go into detail.

The MDT structure on the webpage does not match the on on my device. At least the bootloader structure looks ok. I'll do it anyway because I don't feel like waiting for soldering the UART pins.

I picked the USB way because it seemed simpler.

My USB was not at the SDA1 location, but at SDA.

# mount /dev/sda1 /mnt
mount: mounting /dev/sda1 on /mnt failed: No such device or address
# mount /dev/sda /mnt
# cd /mnt
# ls
uboot128.img  firmware.img

I later on successfully changed the bootloader.

# mtd_write write  /mnt/uboot128.img Bootloader
Unlocking Bootloader ...
Writing from /mnt/uboot128.img to Bootloader ...  [w]

But when I tried to flash the firmware ...

# mtd_write write /mnt/firmware.img Kernel_RootFS
Could not open mtd device: Kernel_RootFS
Can't open device for writing!

Because of course I don't have the Kernel_RootFS partition as I saw before.

So I looked at the comments and someone had the same problem.

It seems I need to use the the 32MB RAM bootloader, but first I checked how much memory I actually have.

# cat /proc/meminfo
MemTotal:        28616 kB

At this point, I can't remount the USB drive. And because I don't want to fuck up the bootloader I'll just try the other method.

*5 minutes later*

Ok so now the USB isn't at /dev/sda1 but at sdb

No need to try the other method. :D

# mount /dev/sdb /mnt
# ls /mnt
uboot256.img  firmware.img

Success writing bootloader.

# mtd_write write  /mnt/uboot256.img Bootloader
Unlocking Bootloader ...
Writing from /mnt/uboot256.img to Bootloader ...  [w]

Success writing kernel.

# mtd_write write /mnt/firmware.img Kernel
Unlocking Kernel ...
Writing from /mnt/firmware.img to Kernel ...  [w]

So that's it for today I guess.

I'll write back to sellers on alibaba tomorow.
I already spent 2 hours on this today and I still have school work do do. :s

Thanks again to Michael and to the 3D Makers My embedded blog.

This was somewhat confusing.

It's like they don't understand the word module sometimes, but maybe I just didn't make it clear enough (Although I did write 32MB of RAM).

Here the supplier quoted the chip alone to be valued at $1.45, while the RT5350 module at $2.2 hmmm. I better contact him.

See? This guy gets it. Too bad he didn't write a price. I'll just contact him.

I'll just add more information (should have included a photo of a PCB too, but this guys are just sellers so it probably wouldn't help.

And if you're wondering, here is my original request:

And I also made a new request (With photo added):

We'll see if they get it now.

I looked at the instructions written here. This should be noted as the source 1 written in brackets: [1].

"PCB marking next to the Ethernet port may be "A5-V11" or "MIFI"." Source: [1]

On my version it's marked MIFI so that's okay.

But just to be sure I'll check everything with telenet.

"One can log in to stock firmware with "admin"/"admin" via telnet" Source: [1]

I used putty.

Default login:

IP: 192.168.100.1
BoC Login: admin
Password: admin

I first noticed the shell difference. The wiki router had msh while I have ash:

On the openWRT wiki source [1]:

BusyBox v1.12.1 (2013-06-20 00:48:37 HKT) built-in shell(msh)

BusyBox v1.12.1 (2012-08-27 10:10:44 CST) built-in shell(ash)

System revision on wiki page router, source [1]:

> show system revision
 
  software version: 2.1.3.8
     product model: Mifi-Storage-3G
     serial number: ZJL2014XXXXX
  hardware version: 1.0
  f/w release date: Aug. 23, 2013 15:27:22

System revision on my router[1]:

# show system revision
-sh: show: not found

Maybe this command is disabled?

It also says on thee wiki [1]:
"If you want to access a full shell, here's how (thanks Whiterat):"

BoC Router> cat /proc/cmdline
Unknow command
BoC Router> runshellcmd
shell mode on
BoC Router> cat /proc/cmdline
console=ttyS1,57600n8 root=/dev/ram0

But I couldn't follow up to the instructions. Am I supposed to connect with a serial port?

# cat /proc/cmdline
console=ttyS1,57600n8 root=/dev/ram0
# runshellcmd
-sh: runshellcmd: not found
# cat /proc/cmdline
console=ttyS1,57600n8 root=/dev/ram0

So I looked at the info I could access in the browser:

The software version on my device was older (2.0.04) then on the wiki page (2.1.3.8) and was released 8 months later, but the mac address did start with 2C:67:FB.

Fuck it, I'll upload the image anyway.

It was successfully upgraded.

Next is says [1]:

"Thereafter, the router is waiting for you to log in with telnet and no password via Ethernet on IP address 192.168.1.1. To access this, set your computer's IP address to 192.168.1.2 subnet 255.255.255.0."

So I connected over cable this time.

And I couldn't connect with 192.168.1.1.

So I tried with 192.168.100.1

And to my surprise, I came to the original page I saw before ... I did not upgrade successfully.

I found a guide here.

So I tried to upgrade the software again, this time over cable. I also used internet explorer.

I still had no luck flashing it.

It's a shame. After 2 hours I still haven't flashed openWRT ...

I'll continue when I'll have more time on my hands.

Maybe I'll even have to flash the image with TFTP ... *sight*

Still looking for a cheaper module I could use though.

I've found this.

But it has an even higher price point.

I've submitted a buying request on alibaba.

I'll report when they come back at me with the prices.

Today I devoted around 3 hours to this project. I think it's a good idea to write how much time I've spent on the project .

I decided to use a cheap 3G router from aliexpress and a cheap USB camera, claimed to work in linux.

The router has Ralink/MediaTek RT5350F inside.

The 3G router (link) took 23 days to arrive to Slovenia (EU). It cost only about 7 dollars.

This is the link mentioned in the above review.

This router is very well documented.

The bottom two images are from that link above.

It looks promising and it works!

The camera (link) works too, but it's resolution is only 640x480 :(

The image is also much closer than it actually is!

Photo album of camera: link

Unfortunately, while twisting the lenses to get a more focused picture, I broke something (??) and now all I can capture is this:

Fortunately I still have a (better) linux-compatible (I think) webcam at home.

When I'll have more time I'll install open wrt on the router and try to establish a connection with the camera.

Abstract: Atmel SAM3S + ESP8826 seems to be my best bet.

I searched around a bit more. As I already knew, if I were to use a STM or NXP mcu, it would cost 10+ dollars for a mcu with DCMI (digital camera interface). And I would still need a chip for the BLE radio.

Today I found out, that Atmel SAM S70 also supports a CMOS camera interface.

It looks neat, but also simple enough to implement with the logic blocks on the PSoC. At least the SAM S70 is cheaper (about 7 dollars(at 1k units)) than the NXP or ST chips, and also in a hobbyist friendlier package.

This webpage will also be very useful if I'll take the PSoC + camera interface with logic blocks approach. At 2.29 dollars (at 1k units) it would seem as the cheapest option, but that option comes without DMA or Universal Digital Blocks so it is useless for what I am doing. The ones that actually have the UDBs cost around 5 dollars.

Later, I found this application note from Atmel, where they use a SAM3S4C mcu which costs only 4.6 dollars (at 1k units), which is really nice.

And probably the best thing about it is that atmel has already written some examples with JPEG compression which is just fantastic.

Maybe I would use WiFI instead of BLE? It seems easer to implement but more expensive to build. Than again, an ESP8826 does not cost that much.