I’ve been having some fun taking pictures last weekend with a self built camera. It costs about 15 € in Ebay and summing up the 6 of the ESP8266 Wemos D1 it makes a total hardware cost of 21 euros. Let’s say 35 if you add a Lion battery and an USB charger to it.
The most basic layout looks like this.
Using here a 2 megapixels ArduCam. There is also a 5 megapixels version. The Pin definition of the camera is like any other serial parallel interface device:
Wiring with Wemos D1
D0 CS
D7 Mosi
D6 Miso
D5 Clk
D2 Sda
D1 Scl
Arducam put together some Instructions Kit where you can find the previous table plus a demo example here.
I went a bit further and made a simple PHP Gallery plus upload-receiver hook and packed it together in a git repository here:
I got some critics saying that this is of course invented and I’m not creating anything new here. But of course the idea is not to make a professional WiFi camera. If so I will simply get one ! The idea was to built one from the scratch.
And the beauty of it is that it does not take perfect pictures. Just because now it’s not soldered sometimes it makes an interesting noise in the pictures and imperfections. The idea is to take this and make it whatever you want. Like for example a security cam that takes a serie of pictures or even records a stream when it detects movement. Or get a 5MB pixels more advanced camera and pack it together in a 3D printed case putting a shutter button and some eink display to preview the picture and change settings.
This is an example of a picture with noise:
And this another one when the right amount of light is there and the cables are good connected
For more pictures and to see how the Php gallery script works check this link.
Fasani Corporation 