Jamie Matthews Revives a Scrap Kodak Brownie Camera with an Espressif ESP32 Digital Conversion

Maker Jamie Matthews has given a scrapped Kodak Brownie Model 1 camera a whole new life, by converting it for digital photography — courtesy of an Espressif ESP32-CAM board where its innards used to be.

"Recently I have seen in increase of these old Kodak Brownie box-style [cameras] for sale locally, most are dirt cheap and I have even come across some at the metal recycling centres," Matthews explains. "As I'm always trying to save as many antique pieces as humanly possible, I wanted to come up with a way to return the usefulness of these beauties. This gave me the chance to finally have a go at a project using the incredible little ESP32-CAM boards that are all set up with a mighty little 2MP sensor."

The heart of the project is an Espressif ESP32-CAM development board, which combines an ESP32 microcontroller with integrated Wi-Fi and Bluetooth radio with an Omnivision OV2640 two-megapixel camera sensor. The result is an impressively compact all-in-one board that can be used to add streaming imagery — or local capture — to almost any device, and which easily fits within the Kodak Brownie's housing.

To raise the project to the next level, Matthews modified the OV2640 camera module to include an M12 mount — allowing for a wide range of lenses, from wide-angle to macro, to be fitted in place of the stock lens. An 18650 lithium-ion cell linked to a boost converter powers everything, while 3D-printed mounts hold everything in place.

Unlike a modern digital camera, there's no display: instead, a simple indicator LED — placed where the flash would go — alerts when the camera is in use. A simple program, meanwhile, places the ESP32 into a deep sleep state until a reset button — placed where the camera's shutter release originally lived — is pressed, at which point the microcontroller wakes up to take an image and save it to a microSD card. An alternative program, meanwhile, converts the camera to a networked device for remote control.

A full guide to the project is available on Matthews' Instructables page.