Camera Drivers

[Dominaezzz]

I want to add camera drivers for ESP32 (I2S), ESP32S2 (I2S and some others) and ESP32S3 (LCD_CAM). I already have a working driver (esp-pacs + esp-idf-hal) for the ESP32 and ESP32S3.

I have two blockers:

1. I need someone with suitable hardware to test/run whatever example I conjure up in my PRs. This issue is meant to advertise the need for this. Anyone with either chip and the OV2640, OV3660 or OV5640 camera would do fine. I can write an example for any of these three cameras. Some example devkits for this include:

   • Freenove_ESP32_S3_WROOM_Board
   • ESP32 PSRAM Timer Camera Fisheye (OV3660)
   • Unit CamS3 Wi-Fi Camera
   • ESP32-CAM
   • ESP32-EYE
   • ESP32-S3-EYE

2. A suitable example to write. Camera initialisation happens over SCCB (I2C pretty much) and is a largely opaque process, as documentation on these OmniVision cameras are quite poor. I don't want to attempt writing a full blown library just for an example and I really want to keep it as simple as possible. Would it be acceptable to just have one big array of tuples describing what registers to write to, their values and some delays between some them? Or do you need examples to be something that people can play around with more?

[MabezDev]

I have two boards, an esp32 and esp32s3 board with an OV2640 so I can test those (I might have an s2 board kicking around too, but I'd have to dig it out).

A suitable example to write. Camera initialisation happens over SCCB (I2C pretty much) and is a largely opaque process, as documentation on these OmniVision cameras are quite poor. I don't want to attempt writing a full blown library just for an example and I really want to keep it as simple as possible. Would it be acceptable to just have one big array of tuples describing what registers to write to, their values and some delays between some them? Or do you need examples to be something that people can play around with more?

I think a tuple of register + data is fine, at least to get something working. Writing the esp CAM driver is enough work, creating a generic camera driver is a whole other project. I also do something similar in my keyboard: https://github.com/MabezDev/mkey/blob/e9ea41c31231d2101b1c52aeb7b5a8e1345c7aa4/firmware/src/main.rs#L311-L617 because I don't have time to write a full driver (yet?).

In terms of an example though, we need something that someone can run and know that the camera works. I don't know the easier route for this. My gut says a simple HTTP server that serves a snapshot of the camera FB periodically, but maybe there is a simpler one?

[Dominaezzz]

but maybe there is a simpler one?

I've never setup an HTTP server on no_std so I don't know how hard it is. Know of any examples?
My initial idea for this (which is the example I have in my project) was to dump the JPEG from the camera as HEX onto the console and use xxd -r -p uart.txt image.jpg to convert it to JPEG file. Somewhat tedious but it works haha.
May be more interesting to stream the footage over serial maybe.

I have two boards, an esp32 and esp32s3 board with an OV2640 so I can test those (I might have an s2 board kicking around too, but I'd have to dig it out).

Fantastic!

I think a tuple of register + data is fine, at least to get something working.

Sweet

[MabezDev]

I've never setup an HTTP server on no_std so I don't know how hard it is. Know of any examples?
My initial idea for this (which is the example I have in my project) was to dump the JPEG from the camera as HEX onto the console and use xxd -r -p uart.txt image.jpg to convert it to JPEG file. Somewhat tedious but it works haha.
May be more interesting to stream the footage over serial maybe.

Ah yeah I didn't think of that, that's probably the lowest barrier to start with. I thought we had a HTTP server example in esp-wifi, but its just client I think (and hand rolled HTTP, not a real crate) so lets go with the uart approach initially.

[Dominaezzz]

Now that LCD_CAM Camera is done, I'll be doing ESP32's I2S Camera mode to take pictures from the same camera. (Once I'm done/bored with my current SPI project)