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ArduCAM ESP8266 UNO board for Arduino Camera

Introduction

ArduCAM now released an ESP8266 based Arduino board for ArduCAM mini camera modules while keeping the same form of factors and pinout as the standard Arduino UNO R3 board. The high light this ESP8266 board is that it well mates with ArduCAM mini 2MP and 5MP camera modules, supports Lithium battery power supply and recharging and with build-in SD card slot. It can be an ideal solution for home security and IoT camera applications.

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By Lee Jackson, ago
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New Book “Home Security Systems DIY” using ArduCAM Mini Camera Module

The author Robert Chin wrote a book for Home Security Systems DIY using Android and Arduino using ArduCAM Mini camera module Arduino and Android. For Arduino and its camera fans, it is right for you to read about it. And now it is available on Amazon

Introduction

This book shows you how to build your own wireless home security system using an Android cell phone or tablet, an Arduino microcontroller, an infrared motion detector, a Bluetooth adapter, and an optional ArduCAM Mini digital camera. All these items are low cost off the shelf parts that are widely available for purchase. This book shows you how to build your own home intruder alarm system that allows you to detect the motion of an intruder and then call out to an emergency phone number using an Android cell phone or just alert you to the intruder with an Android tablet. In addition, an ArduCAM Mini digital camera can be added so that pictures of the intruder can be taken when the motion detector is tripped. You can also use the book’s ArduCAM Mini camera based security system for continuous surveillance of your property. The image data is stored locally on the Android device and does NOT require payment of storage fees as with some home security company plans. This book will also go into the technical details of the hardware set up as well as the author created Android and Arduino software. With these technical details you will be able to customize and expand these systems to suit your specific needs. (more…)

By Lee Jackson, ago

ArduCAM CC3200 UNO Board for Energia

Introduction

ArduCAM team now announces to release a new CC3200 UNO board which is full featured development board almost like a combination of CC3200 Launchpad plus CC3200CAMBOOST pack from TI while keeping exactly the same size as Arduino UNO and pin out.

It is based on TI simplelink series CC3200 chip, which gives you an ARM Cortex M4 processor with a built-in WiFi stack and radio. It supports things like web servers and SSL out of the box. It can be mated with existing thousand kinds of Arduino shields without effort. It makes writing firmware for these devices easier, since a lot of the work is already done. The collection of libraries aids in getting prototypes running quickly. You can even debug Energia sketches using TI’s fully featured IDE.

In addition to standard Arduino pin out and Arduino development environment, it also has additional ArduCAM standard camera interface, user can use TI Code Composer Studio (CCS) to develop and debug camera based application.

ArduCAM CC3200 UNO has build in SWD and JTAG debug circuit, you do not need additional debugger tools to do the debugging. It supports TI CCS and Uniflash seamlessly. If you’re looking to connect things to the internet, with the goal of building some sort of “Internet of Things,” this new ArduCAM CC3200 UNO board is your right option. (more…)

By Lee Jackson, ago

Arduino Panorama Photography with ArduCAM

Panoramic photograph is a technique of photography, using specialized equipment or software, that captures images with elongated fields of view. It is sometimes known as wide format photography. In order to create panorama photos, you have to take several photos from different view point and stitching them afterwards. There are basically two ways to get these photos, one is to use one camera and shooting from different position, the other is to use multiple cameras and shooting at the same time. The later has better stitching result than the former and requires less photography experience, but more complex hardware equipment.

With the hardware nature of ArduCAM shields especially the ArduCAM-mini and Multi-Adapter board for Raspberry, you can connect multiple cameras to a single Arduino or Raspberry Pi board, even shoot the cameras at the same time. In this demonstration we will use 4 ArduCAM mini 5MP with its adapter board and an Arduino UNO R3 board to create your own panoramas or virtual tours.

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By Lee Jackson, ago

ArduCAM now Supports ESP8266 Arduino Board with WIFI Websocket Camera Demo

It is good news to hear that the Arduino IDE support was announced on the ESP8266 community forum, the source code can be found from . It is more than another Arduino board, but can be thought as an Arduino combined with a WIFI shield. With faster CPU speed and much smaller form of factor, most important the less than $10USD price is more attractive, you are worth to try although there are also some limitations. Setup is fairly simple with downloads for Linux, OS X, and Windows. A more detailed setup can be found from the adafruit guide.

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By Lee Jackson, ago

ArduCAM Rev.C+ Shield Released

Introduction

ArduCAM series camera shield is a universal camera control board for Arduino. It hides the complex nature of the camera and provides the easy to use camera control interface as well as the ready to use software source code library and demo code. The ArduCAM supports a variety of camera modules from 0.3MP to 5MP with different formats like RAW, RGB, YUV, JPEG and can be well mated with standard Arduino boards.

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By Lee Jackson, ago

ArduCAM CC3200 WIFI Camera

ArduCAM WIFI camera board is open-source WIFI camera develop board which is based on Texas Instruments CC3200 SimpleLink WIFI IoT solution and Aptina MT9D111 camera module. It offers high-quality live video streaming functions as well as keeps the small size and low power consumption.

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By Lee Jackson, ago

Multi Camera Adapter Module for Raspberry Pi

Before We Start

Standard RPi boards (not Compute Module) accept single MIPI camera, but Arducam offers solutions that take multiple. This blog is the release of the first revision that supports 5MP V1.3 camera multiplexing.

Later, we’ve released a newer adapter to add 8MP support, and also a Stereo Camera HAT to disguise multiple cameras working simultaneously as a single connection acceptable to the Pi.

The latest V2.1 multi-camera adapter board for 8MP Raspberry Pi Camera Module V2 can be found here.

Introduction

This Raspberry Pi multi-camera adapter module is designed for connecting more than one camera to a single CSI camera port on the Raspberry Pi board. Each adapter board can connect up to 4 cameras and the user can stack up maxim 4 adapter boards, which means up to 16 cameras on a single Raspberry Pi board.

Please note that this Raspberry Pi multi-camera adapter board is a nascent product which may have some stability issues and limitations because of the cable’s signal integrity and RPi’s closed source video core libraries, so use it at your own risk.

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By Lee Jackson, ago

ArduCAM Mini Released

ArduCAM Mini is optimized version of ArduCAM shield Rev.C, and is a high definition SPI camera, which reduce the complexity of the camera control interface. It integrates 2MP or 5MP CMOS image sensor OV2640/OV5642, and provides miniature size, as well as the easy to use hardware interface and open source code library. The ArduCAM mini can be used in any platforms like Arduino, Raspberry Pi, Maple, Chipkit, Beaglebone black, as long as they have SPI and I2C interface and can be well mated with standard Arduino boards. ArduCAM mini not only offers the capability to add a camera interface which doesn’t have in some low cost microcontrollers, but also provides the capability to add multiple cameras to a single microcontroller.

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By Lee Jackson, ago

New Spy Camera for Raspberry Pi

  • Introduction

In order to meet the increasing need of Raspberry Pi compatible camera modules. The ArduCAM team now released another add-on spy camera module for Raspberry Pi series boards which is fully compatible with official one.

The board itself is tiny, at around 300mm x 16mm. The neck width of the camera module is 6mm, this highlight making it perfect for endoscope, spy surveillance or other applications where size and image quality are important. (more…)

By Lee Jackson, ago

Rev.C OV5647 Camera for Raspberry Pi Improves the Optical Performance

Introduction

In order to meet the increasing need for Raspberry Pi compatible camera modules. The ArduCAM team now released a revision C add-on camera module for Raspberry Pi which is fully compatible with the official one. It optimizes the optical performance than the previous Pi cameras, and give the user a much clear and sharp image. Also, it provides the FREX and STROBE signals which can be used for multi-camera synchronize capture with proper camera driver firmware.

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By Lee Jackson, ago

ArduCAM host application demonstration

This post introduces how to use ArduCAM host application to take high resolution time elapse image with ArduCAM shield. We need the following items to complete this demonstration:

  • Arduino UNO board
  • ArduCAM-F or ArduCAM-LF shield
  • OV5642 camera module with fisheye lens
  • Arduino example sketch ArduCAM_SPI_OV5642_FIFO_UART.ino
  • ArduCAM host application

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By Lee Jackson, ago

RaspCAM A Raspberry Pi Based Camera

Recently ArduCAM team designed a simple-point-and-shoot digital camera for Raspberry Pi B+ board, it integrates both LCD touch screen and 5MP Raspberry Pi camera board into a single shield. It is well mated with Raspberry Pi B+ board, combined the WIFI dongle user can optionally transfer the captured photos to anywhere else. The RaspCAM features changeable lens options, user can replace the lens with fisheye or telescope lens according to their applications. (more…)

By Lee Jackson, ago