Days after publishing this post about ArduCam and ESP8266 I got some good feedback and 2 friends asked me to get one Camera. At the same time my new 3D Printer “Prusa MK3” has arrived so I decided to make a case remake and release a new small Low-Resolution, instant WiFi upload Camera. What I’m trying to achieve here is a digital Polaroid. Press the shooter buttton and the JPEG will be uploaded to a digital gallery in the next 4 seconds. So it’s a pure WiFi camera, without memory card, and you need to be online to use it.
And that’s nowadays very easy right ? You just need to make a mobile hotspot in the phone if you are outside home. And if the camera does not detect a WiFi then creates an Access point called:
CAM-autoconnect
Then you have to connect to it through the phone and browse 162.168.4.1 there will greet you a “WiFi manager” so you can select a WiFi and write the credentials to make a connection. After that you are all set, you just need to enable the hotspot and the camera will reset and connect to it automatically.
It can take a picture both with the shutter button or have a Video stream or Photo shoot via the Web UI. ( cam.local )
3D Renderings made with Blender
I decided to make a small release of 5 FS2 digital WiFi instant upload cameras at the price of 70 € each.
Materials and costs if anyone is interested to make one are the following:
- 1S 3.7V Li-Polymer (Got one in eBay)
Battery size: 6 x 41 x 68mm 2000mAh /hr
8.50 € - Charger: Adafruit Micro Lipo w/MicroUSB Jack (eBay Not in the picture since this is just my personal prototype)
8 € - Arducam Multi Camera Adapter Board 2MP (eBay)
25 € - Wemos D1 mini
6 € but can be purchased for less - Various connectors and cables (8 Pin SPI white)
2.5 €
That gives a total of 50 € as total hardware costs, printing the case and testing that all works together I’m summing up and additional 20. And you can get 1 year of API use for free. Then you can move it to your own server or you will get part of my Amazon AWS invoice ;)
With the battery full loaded should be online for about 18 hours. It has an On/Off switch that is still not in the picture.
The photos now when it has all cables soldered are better than before although I liked some of the strange effects when the cables where loose. The idea is to make a camera that you shoot blindly without looking at the frame. That gives for me interesting results and I had a lot of fun with it. That combined that in about 4 seconds the picture is already online is really cool. If you are interested in getting one just contact me through this website. Shipping costs are not included.
Picture previews:
Photo shooter has 3 options:
- ONE CLICK Shuts only one picture
- LONG CLICK enters time-lapse mode (a picture every 5 min. but can be configured to your request, should be minimun time 5 seconds though)
- DOUBLE CLICK disables time-lapse mode
The picture is uploaded in my API but the code is called PHP-gallery and it’s in a public repository on github so it can be hosted in any location that supports PHP 5+ and image-magick (Thumbs generator)
Fasani Corporation 