ESP32-Cam Time Lapse
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- Опубліковано 8 лют 2025
- A $6 ESP32 camera is used to record time-lapse footage. It's controlled over a web interface and stores images to an micro SD card. ffmpeg is used to convert the Jpeg images to an mp4 video. While macro photography doesn't work great due to the fixed focus, landscape photography looks good.
Project page with code and information:
bitluni.net/es...
Links to the parts (affiliate links):
ESP32 Cam ($5-8):
aliexpress.bit...
ESP32-Cam Programmer:
link.bitluni.n...
My main camera and lens I used for the good ones (4k 60fps):
amazon.bitluni...
plz share :-)
Check out my Tindie store to get some of my creations:
www.tindie.com...
Consider supporting my lab for some extras and frequent updates:
github.com/spo...
/ bitluni
paypal.me/bitluni
Twitter: @bitluni
reddit: u/bitluni
#electronics #diy #maker
"I like to do timelapses from time to time" that's a good one
when the Camera is cheaper than the microSD card xD
Time lapse cameras won't get much cheaper than that. Great for risky applications, where camera might get damaged, stolen or lost.
Awesome!
Best acceptable excuse for why all supposed photos of beings and objects which existence of is questionable are so poor quality they're useless for evidence except to show something to be mistaken was there. Also masks otherwise obvious clues of being fake. Can't wait until FHD at least is that inexpensive.
@@jasonlisonbee you do realise that the camera that is used for ESP32 CAM is the OV2640 which supports a video resolution of 1600x1200 which is higher than HD and less than 10% lower than Full HD
@@jasonlisonbeeyou can swap the base ov2640 to a ov5640 , it has way better image quality and higher resolution but the esp32 processing capability caps it. Plus it gets REALLY hot
Timelapses are great for showing how everything is in a constant state of change. Nothing stands still. Every second, the entirety of the universe/multiverse changes so dramatically that our feeble little brains can't even comprehend it.
Seems funny that I’ve been working on building a greenhouse for the past few days and I decided to take a break and play around with the esp32-cam I purchased a while ago. You’ve given me some good ideas! Thanks
Great video!
I would like to try taking 3 time lapse movies simultaneously with different exposure settings so that post processing could be used to grab the best data from each exposure and nice smooth fades can be made between exposure levels in the final file. Another approach might be to establish hard-coded exposures based on sun position rather than light readings.
Thank you bitluni for the two USB-serial boards. They are excellent!
I am sure I'm not the only one in saying that we'd love to see your gardening projects too. Especially if you make anything electronics related.
Short answer: yes it can be used. Any camera can be used for time-lapse
Hi Luni your projects are just awesome
thats a incredible project super well done, ill build one by myself in a minute
GRatulation zu den 100k !!!!
Awesome! I need that for all my greenhouse plants. Detecting pest and rot would be a great next step.
And with a bit of AI thrown in detect and destroy pests.
Haha, I like the password!
2:50
Haha 😂 didn't notice!
hahahahahahahaha
A very nice and cool project. Although cheap, quick and dirty a rather remarkable result. Thnxs for sharing.
This is my new favorite channel. Cheers
Some of those 'Board cameras' you can easily change the lenses by simply unscrewing them and replacing with another (Better!) Lens, even Wide-Angle/Fish-eye and mini-Zoom, easy to refocus too by screwing in/out.
Ditto.
@@leef_me8112 Dildo.
You can do that to these, they aren't glued in. There's a video of a guy putting a mechanical IR filter as se over it after removing the lens. Lets you fit bigger lenses like for cctv cameras.
Came here for a project... Didn't expect to find a great new channel. Thx for the video
Very nice timelapses, so beautiful
Very good! Thanks.
I'm not a programmer, but I added a blinking red LED when connecting to a Wi-Fi and writing to a SD card.
It would be nice to add a file with shooting parameters, date and time to the folder with images.
Those are some pretty awesome time lapses. I'm surprised this hasn't shown up on Hackaday yet.
last time i checked wemos mini was kind of the best... but i never knew esp only had a cam version... this is nice
Wow you live in a beautiful area!
Ok, you convinced me.
I'm ordering one today!
Huh? You can order items without taking 10 or more? ;)
@@adlerweb My first order is one. Who knows how many will be in my second order...
I needed to take photo once per day on specific hour. I modify your modification :) Also added ftp server, so now iam able to download captured images without removing sdcard. Now is exactly what i need. Thanks.
DS3231 rtc with SQW pin connected to p-mosfet to connect the power supply to esp32-cam power input will make your batteries last a year.
just awesome stuff for artist, great project as usual man, thumbs up!!! :-)
Wow that are some nice shots
it would be nice to know how you got the time-lapse bottom to show up so we all can use it
looks great for a $6 addon, great work.
Congrats on 100k Subs! Looks pretty good at 1/2 meter IMO.
Very nice video, thank you!
Why did you write the sketch in so many different little files. Wouldn't it work just as well with all the parts in one sketch?
What a password!!! Great!
Great video and instruction
Thank you for your time and effort in teaching us about this. Awesome!!
Congrats for 💯 k Subs :)
Thanks, I was thinking about doing this, we have flower fields in the spring that causes massive traffic jams, so I wanted to place a camera at an ideal spot and receive it a month later. I guess I would need a good battery.
Bitluni ftw... You live in a beautiful place. Nice tomatoes.
Very nice project. I'll do this :D thanks
Great work ! But is there a way of getting this to work in server mode so that I can set it up without a router close by? I guess yes but the real question is how, maybe you could tweak the code a little ??? I'm kinda new to this and my attempts at tweaking have all failed.
BTW: Mac Users you can easily use QuickTime 10.5 to join pictures to a video, works great.
Thanks!
Hi! I made a comparable system with the same camera, but added a small 0.96” oled screen and a button to allow changing the timelapse intervals. Do you think it is possible to also use the display to change the camera settings? I can give you my code if you want...
with a screen that small and only one button, why not just use the esp as a wifi station and use the web interface?
Cool. I like that this cam actually gets more developed with. Atm the ammount of sketches for noobs like me is very limited.
Looks better than the 35 Euro Raspberry Pi camera. I'm in!
You save my day, tahnks
I need help, can someone helps me please. Everything works until i click the Start Timelapse then i have a Error ... and it doestn captures any photos and it restarts.. Error ist Guru Meditation Error: Core 1 panic'ed (IllegalInstruction). Exception was unhandled.
Memory dump at 0x400d2a60: a5004136 000000a0 7d004136
Core 1 register dump:
genial Chef !!!!
how about some project with your garden? I think you can make it fun. Very nice video, thanks
Wow that's awesome are you from austria?
Great idea! I want to do something similar for my vegetable garden. What power source do you use for the unit?
Please make a webcam version or just resolder a better camera with Better sensor is that possible?
thanks!
Very good
I wonder if these boards changed recently. I tried building a reset circuit like yours early last year and encountered the LED connected to (IIRC) IO0, causing reset to be flaky at best and I just gave up on this model. Might be time to revisit.
@bitluni Could you try to make like a super cheap micro action cam? Doesn't matter the video quality as much as cost. Just to be relax if it gets crashed or something 😅
how about a little help file explaining what all the abbreviation stand for and their meaning in the ov2640 settings?
This camera better than any 1000$ ++ banks security camera.
Can you make a project by connecting a usb webcam to the esp32 and send the livestream over wifi to the pc
How's the current draw? Does it deep sleep?
just wondering why you did not implement easy to change wifi ssid and password without recompile the sketch again. and one more thing is append jpeg frame-by-frame without the need of external pc.
Excellent video. Just bumped into your video/channel and was pleasantly surprised.
I will subscribe after writing my comment and will watch some more.
Have a nice Sunday afternoon. Greetings from Belgium 🇧🇪
have run quite a few progs on these cams, but for some reason this code example does not save a pic..it just resets the board. switching to a 5V power bank vs the computer usb cable with no change It simply keeps resetting the board . I did notice you don't include the soc.h libs to deal with brownouts but i am not getting an error code along those lines. Otherwise, this is a nicely presented project.
hi bitluni, a very nice project, but... in your last version, the jpeg save doesn't work. the cam creates a directory after the other at ssd card, but does not store photos in it... what could be the reason? the web server works fine...
best regards
Matthias
ESP32 1.04 instead of 2.06 is the solution... Matthias
Is it possible to use a addition micro lens to have good focus in close range ?
Nice informative video.
Thanks
hi friend, thanks for the codes, but i cant install the libs, why? i tried all metods
This works perfectly, right out of the box....but I have no idea how it actually works. Is there any way I can find out how these add-on objects work...aside from reading the cpp code?
Glue a lens salvaged from a CD/DVD player for macro.
Also, the lens can actually be focused manually. It has a screw thread but it is kept in place with a small blob of glue. It can be forced a little to break the glue bond and can then be focused even for a distance of just a few mm. If the lens is too loose after breaking the glue you may need to put a new blob of glue, preferably a weak glue that can easily be broken if you want to refocus.
I thought it was a laser
Pl explain thru video.
@@sriyantra1939 The lens focuses the laser. Possibly more accurately, the pickup's view of a reflection of the laser. Seperate sub component.
To make the camera more near-sighted, you can also by a EUR 2 pair of reading glasses and fix one glass in front of the camera.
very cool. keep the vids coming :)
Great work! When I tried your code the led stayed on permanently. Also how about a mode in the code and hacker interface to put camera into deep sleep after taking a photo. Keep up good work please.
Hello thank you for this video
could you tell me what code to add to set the time with the ntp server with wifi, because the date and time displayed on the micro sd are not correct (January 1, 1980)
THANKS
Every time you use that camera are need a wifi Internet?
I hope you respond 🥰 i planning to make my own project like this.
You need a wifi access point to connect, but not internet. You connect to wifi just for controlling them, it's an intRAnet, just the devices connected to the wifi.
You can use an ESP32 as a wifi access point, but very slow so video preview would be impossible.
With a suitable power supply, a big ass SD Card, stripped down ESP (Bluetooth/Wifi/Webserver are unnecessary once you configured it) and some code tweaking this could also be used for timelapses over very long durations, as the ESP is quite power-efficient
awesome
Isn't the LED supposed to act as drive activity light hence why it flashes when you use the sd card?
No its a Flash LED Not a small Indikator LED.
perfect for 3d printing videos :D
Muss man das am Computer betreiben oder kann man einfach zb eine powerbank anschließen?
How did you power these?
Dear bitluni, The link in the discription of the esp32 cam is working but they ain't selling it via that link anymore.
nice time lapses
You could try initializing the SD card in 1 bit mode, so the flash pin is not used for communication with the SD Card. This way the data rate is slower. But that's mainly a problem when running on battery. And having an LED blinking all the time isn't exactly power saving either. :D
You can initialize the SD card in 1 bit mode with:
SD_MMC.begin("/sdcard", true);
Not sure if the library supports the 4 bit protocol, I believe that would also not interfere with the LED and would be faster. But anyway, you could try to see if you can get away with the 1 bit mode or if the speed is too slow. Or desolder the LED... :D
Wow so nice
Yeah, it's a 2MB camera but it looks like the biggest issue is optics.
Maybe design an adapter for trying camera lens?
You could fix the focus to macro if you unscrew the lens 1 or 2mm, so you enlarge focus a little bit, does the lens rotates ?
Hello :) I have make your version of timelapse camer, but i have there a little problem. When i start timelaps, esp create folder in sd cart but doesnt save any photos. After creating folder , esp its rebooting and in next start creat next folder without photos. What can i do with that?
So i have found resolt for it. Just change esp32 version from 2.0.1 to 1.0.4 and all will works.
can we make this timelapse camera project to send data instead of saving on sd card permanently like let say after some time transfer timelapse folder data to some server or back to my pc so that we do not have to physically access the sd card again and again? my use case is to monitor birds ( bird watching ) so i dont want to disturb them by going close to their nest however placing a esp32 module is very stealthy and they do not get scared of it .
Intéressant
hummmm interesting channel you have here.. looks like I am gonna have to stick around a bit and learn some new tricks (which is kinda hard at 68.. But I never stop trying)
are you 70 yet
@@clonkex yup.. and learning new tricks is harder then it used to be... Sheesh! who knew...
Nice idea
Yes it's shared ... The sd data pin and the led flash uses the same io port ... :-(
esp32 cam module can use ov5640 camera???
why doesnt it make the .mp4?
Motion detecting security camera seems a much better use for the setup.
This pleb let an ad play through minimized with the sound off. Yep, not jailbroken currently.
I uploaded the code albeit it does not store images in the SD card. Would you please give me some advice? Thanks in advance.
Nice thats very cool
The esp32 is the dogs bollocks !
Time to go buy a few cameras! Cheers!!
101k subs. Nice!
Holly FAK your editing skills are next level... gat dayuum :/
can this modul connect to microphone?