Espressif Highlights the ESP32-P4's Vision Capabilities with the Camera-Like ESP32-P4-EYE Dev Board
Smile for the microcontroller: Espressif's high-performance RISC-V system-on-chip now comes in compact camera form.
Espressif has launched a new development board based on its ESP32-P4 system-on-chip — but, unusually, this one's in the style of a compact camera: the ESP32-P4-EYE.
"ESP32-P4-EYE is a vision development board based on the ESP32-P4 chip, mainly targeting camera applications," Espressif explains of its latest launch, as if one glimpse at its form factor couldn't reveal its intended use-case. "Rich onboard features include a camera, display, microphone, and MicroSD card, enabling real-time monitoring of the environment and collection of image and audio data. It is suitable for applications such as smart surveillance cameras, vision model detection, and edge computing in IoT that require real-time image processing and wireless communication."
The new development board, brought to our attention by CNX Software, is built around the Espressif ESP32-P4 chip — a part Espressif announced back in January 2023 but which was slow in coming to market. It features two 32-bit RISC-V processor cores running at up to 400MHz and a low-power companion core running at up to 40MHz, 768kB of static RAM (SRAM), and vector extensions designed to accelerate on-device machine learning and artificial intelligence (ML and AI) workloads. It also includes other features tailored for video and vision work, including a two-dimensional graphics accelerator and a vision processing unit for hardware-accelerated H.265 and JPEG encoding and decoding.
Where the company's previous development boards for the ESP32-P4 have taken a more traditional design, the ESP32-P4-EYE is a camera — literally, coming as it does with a case in a familiar in somewhat outdated compact camera form factor. There's a 1.54" 240×240 SPI-connected LCD at the rear and a two-megapixel camera sensors to the front with manual focus lens. There's a rotary encoder with push-switch function accessible at the top of the case to control a user interface, and a small lump that houses an LED serving as a basic flash and a digital microphone for audio.
Inside the housing, the development board includes an ESP32-C6-MINI-1U module to serve as a Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 5.0, and IEEE 802.15.4 communication coprocessor, 16MB of flash storage, and a 20-pin female expansion header that breaks out unused general-purpose input/output (GPIO) ports. There's also a pair of buttons to the front, but don't expect either to capture a photo: one is boot-select and the other reset. There's a microSD Card slot for storage, and two USB Type-C ports, one USB On-The-Go (OTG) and one debug, for data and power — with support for running from an internal battery, too.
The ESP32-P4-EYE is available to order from Espressif's AliExpress store now at $42 plus shipping; more information is available on the company's documentation page.
