Skip to main content

ESP32CAM Night Vision Hack - How to enable ESP32CAM to provide night vision

 



  • The ESP32CAM is a super cheap IP streamable camera running off an ESP32 and an omnivision sensor like the OV2640. It is around 600 INR (2022). It would be cool indeed if it could do night vision too.
  • A long time ago another webcam had been hacked to provide night vision capabilites.
  • So there was a need to check if the ESP32CAM could also be similar converted to an IR camera. The advantage this would provide would be to have night vision with an IR light as is common in security cameras. 
  • So the uses are many: security camera, trail camera and more importantly a camera with source available to change it to do anything.
  • With help from the right contacts, the lens assembly was opened up and the relevant filters were removed.
  • There was a problem in re-assembly as a small lens would keep falling off and would interfere with the image. It was solved by gluing the lens assembly.
  • Below is a video showing the results of the enabling of night vision on ESP32Cam. 
  • One can see that in total darkness, there is no image and when an IR light is introduced, the camera does provide night vision of the object. The IR light used was not very powerful and hence one had to get close to it to see the effect. 
  • Maybe next version change this to use high power IR light and also make a trail camera with a PIR sensor, etc.




Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Game for the blind

Have been thinking about writing a game for the blind since a long time Got an opportunity when a couple of High School Kids came up with the requirement Many options were experimented on: Scratch, Unity, etc It was decided to Keep it Simple and modding an existing game What other better than to implement in python and use python games Used an example from here  PyGame Pythonprogramming.net example   This is a car game where one has to avoid blocks in its path or falling on it To make it suitable for blind playing, visual representation of a block falling on the car or not and the speed of it falling were alerted to the user by means of different sounds; one tone for block not being in line with the car, one tone for slow rate of drop on the car and one tone for rapid rate of drop on the car. So hearing these sound clues, one can use the cursor keys to escape the falling blocks. This can be seen in the video. One can also play comfortably with their eyes closed. It can be impr...
2 comments
Read more

Leg Brake for a Bicycle

Leg Brake on a Bicycle  Growing up, there was a need to learn how to drive a geared motor cycle and also get a driver's license. There are two categories of two wheeler licenses: one for geared vehicles usually with leg brakes and one for auto/non-geared vehicles where the braking happens by hand and are simpler to operate. Driving license had already been acquired for the non-geared vehicle but due to lack of availability of a geared vehicle for practice, the acquiring of this license was taking quite some time. The main problem was adapting to braking a vehicle using the leg where one to respond differently and the conditioning takes some time. Unfortunately could not manage to get anybody/s vehicle for learning after many attempts. And at that time (1995 or so) bicycles were rather common and used for transport. So an idea was: why not add such a feature to a bicycle. A Hercules Town and Trek was also available. After some visits to the local bicycle shop and a used vehicle part...
Post a Comment
Read more

RGB Dot Matrix Display as Multi-Function Panel Display

PxMatrix on ESP8266 connected to an 32x16 RGB DOT MATRIX 1/8 SCAN Panel It was always wonderful to see the numerous colour displays that display messages and animations on Dot Matrix Displays (DMD) in the commercial places. One useful thing would be to take an Off-the-Shelf Display and run fully controllable custom software rather than rely on some external products to do. Luckily found a display vendor who offered to give me some DMD as samples for experimentation. I was given a P10 32x16 pixel color DMD panel. I have experimented with Monochrome DMDs (maybe blog about this later) but the RGB display is another world all together. The Monochrome world does not have lot of open source software, the RGB world has PxMatrix, RGBMatrix and SmartMatrix. As I wanted the controlling entity to be super cheap which meant use of an 8266 I had to start with PxMatrix. Though there are better options than PxMatrix, the others use a more expensive controller. Its better to start with the lowest cost...
Post a Comment
Read more