Published January 29, 2019 © MIT

A $9 Fully Open Source Streaming Webcam with No Soldering!

There have been previous ESP32-based camera projects. But I wanted something that supports standard RTSP video streaming.

BeginnerFull instructions provided30 minutes20,608

A $9 Fully Open Source Streaming Webcam with No Soldering!

Things used in this project

Hardware components

ESP32 camera

This board has everything you need - no need to buy anything else.

Espressif ESP32S

Camera (generic)

Story

This project needs no soldering. Just buy one of the cheap ESP32-CAM boards (includes CPU and the camera). Install and run my software and then view your camera on your security software of choice (or VLC).

Acquire the camera (others should work also, see the github repo for a list. The cheapest I've found is $8).
Install PlatformIO.
Download this git repo and cd into it.
cp src/wifikeys_template.h src/wifikeys.h - and then edit wifikeys.h with your network info.
Run "pio run -t upload" (This PlatformIO command will fetch dependencies, build the project and install it on the board via USB)

Done! Now your camera should happily be serving up a video stream either to your web browser or a standard RTSP video client (like VLC):

See device URL in the title bar.

More details are included in the git repo in case you want to reuse this library elsewhere. Any feedback happily accepted.