Review on 🔮 Revolutionize Your IoT Projects with ESP-Eye Development Board" by Tim Pulse

Bought to compare with Zero rpi + Camera and was pleasantly surprised with the image quality after installing the Arduino IDE example (AI Thinker ESP CAM board type) and the CameraWebServer example. It takes just over 1 second to capture and display a 1600 x 1200 JPG image, which isn't bad for $20. The instructions make it seem like something flared up on the board, so I only tried it for a minute or two. to "wake it up" with my voice and if that didn't work I went straight to the Arduino IDE and downloaded the example app, tweaked it a bit for my network and bam it worked. The quality of the code is not the best, but here it is enough to take pictures and upload them to a browser or other data sink. I don't see any specific headings on this board. There are a few bare pads labeled DOUT, DIN, CLK, CS that look like an SPI connection, but other than that you'll probably be talking to it over Wi-Fi. available are exposure, gain, contrast, saturation, etc. The example source code doesn't do much for processing (because it would require decompression of the compressed data), so they are all controlled by the camera module. The lens is threaded, but the whole thing looks quite fragile and can be glued on. I didn't notice an obvious depth of field, so imagine it's like an old cell phone camera in terms of functionality. (fixed focus). I noticed that using the sample camera code in streaming mode generates some heat. It probably shouldn't be packed too tightly into the case and it will likely need some airflow. Power pins/pads are not visible. So expect to use the USB port for 5V power.