Smallest Camera Module based on ESP32 S3 | XIAO ESP32S3 Sense

so State studio is launching back-to-back new development boards under their Shao family and this time they did a fantastic job by launching Xiao esp32 S3 board well this is the smallest ever ESP based board with the camera module built in and it's just the size of my thumbnail so in this video I'll be discussing everything about this board starting from the specifications of the S3 chip specifications of the overall Xiao S3 board that will be learning about how to use this board with the help of Arduino IDE help me testing out some example codes in it and we'll be also testing the camera model by taking pictures and videos and storing them into SD card so this is that one video which you need to watch if you're thinking to buy the S3 module or in case you already bought that module and want to learn how to use it so sit back let's get started with this video this video is sponsored by LTM and they came up with an amazing product called as ldm 365. so ldm 365 is an Electronics product design platform that unites PCB design mcad data management and teamwork so with LTM 365 you can do the PCB designing task you can share your projects over web for review purposes it do cover sharing your PCB file to Mechanical team so that they can create the mechanical product package based on your PCB then it also provides the centralized cloud storage so you don't need to rely on one single computer for your files it also helps you with managing your components and get real-time supply chain data for your components it also allows multiple people to work on single project and in the end it also helps you with sending your design to final manufacturing units so LTM 365 takes care of all other tasks so you put more time and effort in making something creative and useful and the good part is you can try out its free version as well I'll leave its free trial version link down in the description of this video so do check that out and now let's start with this video so this is how you'll receive the product like every other show board and inside this we get a Xiao esp32 S3 board an expansion board and an antenna so this is all you get inside an esp32 S3 sense board while if you purchase the Xiao esp32 S3 board you won't be getting the expansion board with it and its price is also a bit cheaper so you can purchase this according to your need and application I'll be leaving down the purchase link for both the boards down in the description of this video so do check them out now let's talk about the specifications of Astra chip so esp32 S3 R8 is based on Dual Core extensor lx7 microprocessor clocked at 240 megahertz it has built in 2.4 gigahertz Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 5 with ble mesh it has onboard 8mb of psram and the xiaop board particularly has 8 MB of flash memory now let's talk about the overall specification of the Xiao board so this board has 11 gpio pins out of them six pins can also act as analog pins and nine pins can also act as touch bands we do have dedicated pins for i2c uart and SPI communication and if we attach the camera expansion board we get two extra gpios which can act both as analog and digital pins then we have a type c port to Power It Up program the board and also to charge the battery on the top we have two really very small push buttons out of them one is the reset button and other is the boot Button well I haven't seen these small push buttons ever like they are even smaller than the Xiao esp32 C3 board then we also have a charging indicator LED and a user LED connected to GPI 21. on the back we have a battery terminal connector as this board also has built-in battery management circuit in it now talking about the expansion board then it has ov2640 camera sensor which has maximum resolution of 1600 by 1200 pixels it also has an mems microphone on board plus it also got an SD card slot behind the camera in which we can insert an SD card up to 32 GB to store all our audio and video recordings and all this comes in the size of just 21 by 17.5 mm and with the expansion board the thickness is just 15 mm its size is insanely small if we consider all the features that it provides well like button if you really really designed and the functionality is provided by the S3 board okay is after knowing about the specification of this board let us jump onto our Arduino IDE and let's see how to program this board so here in your Arduino ID first you need to download the latest version of your esp32 boards package and for that you need to go to Arduino preferences and here click on this and in the new line you need to paste this link which I'll be providing in the description of this video click on OK click on OK once again then you need to go to tools into board and then into boards manager and here just search out for esp32 and here in my case I have already installed but you need to click on the install button to install the package and in case you already have the package make sure you update that package right now I'm using the version 2.0.9 and I'll be testing all the cores in this version only this was the one thing that you need to be sure uh before uploading any code into the shop C3 Port so once you do all these steps the new board will appear inside your esp3 to board section which is nothing but the Xiao esp32 S3 just select that board okay now I have already connected my Xiao C3 board with the uh with the laptop using the type C cable and I will first of all upload the basic LED blink example code and let's see if the code gets successfully uploaded or not so here's the LED blink example code I'll select the right com Port which is as 3D module and click on the upload button okay the code is successfully uploaded and on the board the orange LED started blinking which is the built-in LED connected to GPI 21 of S3 chip now let's test one more example code with that example code will be able to see if the Wi-Fi in this board works or not so I'll go to the Wi-Fi section and here I'll just upload the code for Wi-Fi scan and to test the Wi-Fi make sure you already connected the patch antenna with the board otherwise it may not be able to scan the networks okay I'll be uploading this code straight away okay so Wi-Fi scan code is uploaded on the serial monitor as you can see it says scan start and it already scanned the Wi-Fi networks available nearby so the Wi-Fi in this chip also works completely fine and yeah this was the basic two example course just to test everything is working smooth now let's move ahead and connect the expansion born with this Xiao C3 or Xiao S3 board and let's just test the camera expansion mode and today's how the camera will be open the example code which we were using in our shower or esp32 Cam board which is nothing but the camera web server so maximize this window and here we just need to select the uh you know correct camera module which is our Xiao esp32 S3 after that we need to provide the Wi-Fi credentials so I'll quickly provide my Wi-Fi credentials here great after that you don't need to change anything inside the code just go to the tools and here you need to do one change which is you need to select the psram as op IPS Ram that's the only changing to do and after that everything is same as before and I'll straight away hit the upload button and let's just wait till the code gets uploaded okay so code is uploaded I'll open the serial Monitor and it got connected with the Wi-Fi and it also provided an IP address so I'll copy this IP address open up my web browser and the new tab I will paste this IP address and yeah here is the same interface that we were getting in our esp32 camboard as well and if I click on start stream it will start streaming the live camera you know footage through these uh S3 board and the quality is pretty much same as that of the esp32 cam but with the much much smaller form factor and here we can change the resolutions as well let's just go with the VGA okay so yeah this is a little bit bigger a frame but yeah the trade-off is the frame rate will reduce as we increase the resolution and one negative point which I felt in the Xiao C3 board is when I touch the back side of this board while it is streaming it is really very hot uh as of now while streaming so in case if you're using this for the project purpose make sure you attach some kind of ventilation or a fan or some kind of thing at the back to make it cool down otherwise it may stop responding as well it's really very hot at the back okay so yeah this is how you can you know stream the live footage not only that you can also save the photo uh by clicking here it will be saved inside your computer which you can visualize later on so yeah this is that image and that thing you can do here you can go with the face detection face recognition pretty much the same as that of the esp3 cam mode okay now uh there is one GitHub repository available in the official uh whose link was available on the official Seed Studio page which is this and this repo contains couple of really interesting code which is to take photos and store in the SD card to record video and store in the SD card okay so let's try out these two example cores and let's see if it is actually working and be able to save the data or not okay so in my case I already downloaded the zip file okay uni also need to download the zip file from this GitHub repo I'll leave this link as well in the description and I will open that folder okay so yeah here is that folder and here are a couple of example codes so let's start with take photos Okay so I'll select the take photos example code I'll open the in Arduino IDE I'll maximize this and the code is made just for the Xiao C3 sound S3 mode so we don't need to do any changes in this code okay so what I'll do is before uploading this photos I'll take an SD card and I will quickly format it through my computer and after formatting that SD card I will insert that card into my Xiao S3 board and now we are ready to upload the code okay so let's just see so this code will save the new image after every 60 seconds so 60 seconds is a longer time so just reduce uh the time to just 10 seconds so every 10 seconds it will take a new image and store it okay so instead of Hit the upload button and let us wait for the code to get uploaded okay so code is successfully uploaded open the serial monitor it says photo will begin in one minute please be ready in our case it will be taken in 10 seconds just let's just pause for it okay so image one is taken let's just move its face in different direction for a different image okay image 2 is already taken okay so I'll unplug this S3 board I'll detach this SD card I'll insert that SD card in my computer and let's just see if the image is stored or not and how's the quality of those image okay so it's the pen drive and here are those two images so yeah this is the image one which I took and this is the image 2 of our tagline which is explode learn shell but only we got learn and shared doesn't matter okay the quality is not that uh you know crystal clear okay but it's a decent kind of quality like you can visualize you can analyze what is there inside that image okay so yeah that's the quality and that's how you can store different pictures you can take a time lapse using this a Xiao S3 board as well right now let's just try to record the video and store it well that will be much more interesting right so first of all I'll unplug this SD card insert it back to my Xiao S3 board connect it with my computer and yeah let's just open the another example code which is inside the same GitHub repo which is nothing but a record video I'll open this and once again this code is specifically made for the S3 board so no need to do any changes just make sure everything is completely fine like Xiao S3 board is selected the PS Ram is selected which is this and the com Port is selected I'll straight away hit the upload button okay code is uploaded let's just open the serial monitor it says video will begin in one minute please be ready let's just be prepared for the video okay it says recording video with the name video Zero dot Avi and led is also blinking on the board if is it visible or not but yeah the orange LED is blinking that reveals okay it says uh video saved with video Zero okay and another video will start in next one minute okay let's just unplug this let's just detach the SD card and let's just see what kind of video it recorded and how is the quality of that video so I'll insert that SD card into my computer once again I'll open the SD card which is Boot and yeah here is the video 0.avi and I'll start playing this but it is not supported in my player so let me just open another in another player so the Ava 5 was not supported in any of my built-in clicker so I just I went online and I converted the dot avi file to dot MP4 uh file and I'll click on the download button and click on allow and it downloaded the MP4 version of that file and let's try to play that version now so it's inside my downloads folder I'll open it with the QuickTime player and yeah here is that video so it recorded a video of around three second but it's time for fast forwarded video yeah so it's kind of a fast forward video but yeah it recorded a video uh using the S3 board I don't know why it is fast forwarded maybe there is something that I need to change in the code but yeah that agenda was clear it is able to record a video and store it in the SD card as well okay now this board also has built-in microphone in it okay the video was not having any audio but let's just try to upload any code that can record the audio file and save it inside the SD card well that example code is also provided by the Seed Studio website only so let me show you that example code okay so on this uh page of Seed Studio I found the code that can record uh the audio and store it inside the micro SD card I'll simply copy this code and I'll open a new sketch or in the Arduino IDE I'll paste that sketch here and this is also made for this same S3 board only so no need to do any kind of changes here I'll just plug the SD card inside RS3 board I'll connect it with my computer and yeah let's just hit the upload button already successfully uploaded and opened the serial Monitor and it says ready to start recording and let's just see if it is recording right now or not I'm not able to understand because there is no LED blink as well and uh it says ready to start recording but it doesn't say as a recording okay writing to the file the recording is over I don't know what it recorded but let's just unplug this and insert this SD card into the computer and let's see if it recorded anything or not I'm not sure if it is recorded or not this is recording is over so hopefully we'll be having any kind of recording file I'll go inside this folder and yeah we have the Arduino underscore rec.wav I'll open this with my music player and let's just see to understand because there is no LED playing as well C is ready to start recording but it doesn't say as modding what all the audio quality was pretty amazing it was clearly Audible and there was a lesser amount of noise so yeah the mic is awesome and we are definitely able to store the recording so yeah this is kind of a great spy kind of Gadget that cannot record the audio record the video store in SD card with a very tiny size like you can you know hide it anywhere in the room and nobody will be able to recognize if there is some kind of spy gadget in the room or not awesome right so those were some of the example codes that we tested on the S3 board now if I talk about the popular iot platforms like Rainmaker and bling then I definitely tried both the codes and for the blink it was successfully running on the Xiao S3 board and I was able to control the onboard LED using the Bling mobile application quite smoothly but if I talk about The Rainmaker code then it was not working at all in the Xiao S3 mode even though on the official Rainmaker website it is mentioned that the rainmaker supports an esp32 S3 chipsets but I don't know but as of now while making this video Xiao C3 board doesn't support The Rainmaker code using Arduino IDE so that's one thing that you need to note before purchasing moving ahead let this now test the battery on the S3 board so on the back we soldered the lithium battery and initially we put that battery in the charging mode the battery charging is indicated by the blinking red LED on S3 board and once the battery is fully charged the red LED stops blinking so after it got sufficient charge in it we tried the blink example code and it was working completely fine on battery not only that I was also able to live stream the video on the S3 board running on a battery a tiny little spy portable camera how awesome this is so yeah that was all about getting started with the Xiao S3 board and in this video I tried to cover the example codes that will help you to get started with the board and also to make you understand what kind of application this board is made for on internet I've saw one interesting application which was a guy made a tiny little tank using the Xiao S3 board which can be controlled via web browser and not only that we can also live stream the video through that board that was a really interesting project and our team was thinking of to make similar robots not that tiny though but smaller than the regular ones share your thought about that project down in the comments of the video and also share your thoughts about will you ever be purchasing this S3 board and if yes for what applications you be going for this board share your thoughts down in the comments of the video and that being said I am just ending this video here and now just wait for my next video Until Then explore learn share with me techie SMS sorry [Music]

Channel: techiesms

Views: 35,554

Keywords: techiesms, electronics, electronics projects, Xiao esp32 s3, xiao esp32 s3 sense, esp32 s3 camera, Seeed studio, esp32s3, esp32s3 arduino, xiao esp32s3 sense, esp32s3 cam, esp32 cam board, esp32 camera, esp32 cam projects, esp32 camera streaming, xiao esp32 s3, esp32cam projects

Id: _wvuOsRgmt4

Length: 18min 21sec (1101 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 17 2023