Interfacing 5MP SPI Camera with NodeMCU ESP8266

Overview

This tutorial is about Arducam Mega Camera, as we will be interfacing this 5MP SPI Camera with NodeMCU ESP8266 WiFi Module. Recently Arducam launched a legendary camera solution that helps you connect one or more cameras to any microcontroller without the least effort. It is particularly targeted for battery-powered IoT devices, embedded machine vision, and artificial intelligence applications. Arducam Mega Camera can work with any microcontroller with a single standard SPI interface. No memory is required for register settings or frame buffers. The best part is it is fully compatible with 3.3V and 5V systems.

In this project we will interface 5-megapixel Arducam Mega Camera with NodeMCU ESP8266 Board and do the various operations including image capturing with various pixel resolutions. We will also stream some videos only with the help of the ESP8266 Board. Arducam has released Arducam Mega SDK for Arducam Mega camera which makes the programming very simple. So, let’s go through this camera & its operations in detail.

Arducam Mega Camera

The Arducam Mega Camera is a legendary camera solution that helps you connect one or more cameras to any microcontroller without or the least effort. It is basically targeted for battery-powered IoT devices, embedded machine vision, and artificial intelligence applications.

Arducam Mega can work with any microcontroller with a single standard SPI interface. Only 4 pins (GPIOs) are required excluding VCC & GND. No memory is required for register settings or frame buffers. It is fully compatible with 3.3V & 5V systems. The camera can be directly used with Arduino, STM8/STM32, ESP8266/ESP32, MSP430, Nordic, Renesas & other MCU systems.

The camera is specially designed for energy-saving applications. You can completely switch off the camera when your MCU is sleeping, without worrying about loading long register settings, as it does for you instantly (less than 100 ms) and automatically. There are two versions of Arducam Mega cameras, one with 3MP(fixed focus) and the other with 5MP(autofocus). It comes with a default enclosure, you can mount it easily wherever you want.

The detail of this Camera is explained in the previous post. You can follow the Arducam Getting Started guide to learn each and every detail about this Camera.

Interfacing 5MP Arducam Mega Camera with NodeMCU ESP8266

Now let us see how we can interface 5 megapixel SPI Camera called Arducam Mega with NodeMCU ESP8266. The connection diagram is fairly simple as shown in the image below.

Following is the connection between NodeMCU ESP8266 Board & 5MP Arducam Mega Camera.

You can directly connect the Camera with NodeMCU ESP8266 Board using the jumper wires.

Arducam Mega Library Installation

The Arducam has released the library for ESP8266 Boards & other microcontrollers. The environment configuration and use is based on Arduino IDE.

Downloaded the library file & copy the extracted folder to the Arduino library folder.

Source Code/Program

After the library is added to the Arduino Library folder, you can use the example code from the library example to test the Camera.

We will use an example called full_featured to test the camera.

After selecting the example, select the NodeMCU 1.0 Board from the Board list & then click on the upload button to upload the code to the Arduino UNO Board.

Testing the Camera

To test the Camera working we need some GUI visulization software. So download the Arducam software from the following link.

After downloading, install the software on your computer.

After installation, Select the NodeMCU ESP8266 port number, the baud rate is 921600, and click open.

Now the Camera gets connected to the visualization software. Therefore you can move the camera in different directions to see everything on GUI Screen.

You can click the image button to take a photo. You can click the close button to close the display window. You can also select the resolution & format.

Click the Video button to enable video streaming mode, the default resolution is 320X240. Click the close button to disable video streaming mode.

The auto exposure is enabled by default. When using manual exposure, you need to turn off the automatic exposure function.

The auto gain is enabled by default. When using manual gain, you need to turn off the automatic gain function.

The software has a feature for brightness control, contrast control, EV control, saturation control, special effects control, white balance control, and focus control.

The autofocus control is available on the 5MP Arducam Mega Camera. You can enable or disable this feature. Enable or disable the continuous focus function, the default is to disable the continuous focus function.

That’s all from this tutorial. This camera has the ability to empower the future of IoT as this is the best camera solution for any MCU-based, low-power IoT and embedded vision applications/systems.

Video Tutorial & Guide