First PiDay of the decade.

[tom r lopes]

I went by Cafe Blue Door today at noon, so we should be good to go.  (Alternate site would be Romeo's Coffee on Telegraph + Dwight)  

I have been playing around with an ESP32CAM.  (I got 2 for $18 at Amazon)  The esp32 and the earlier esp8366 are small wifi+Bt boards which are actually microcontrollers.  So 

they can run arduino code.  

The one I got has a built in camera port and can do camera streams.  I connected to arduino ide and added the esp board descriptions.  Unlike other arduino boards this one doesn't have builtin USB so you have to hook it up to a serial cable (so it is very small - about the size of a car remote.)  

Took a while but I got it working today.  First issue was the board requires shorting some pins to get into program mode.  With that figured out and code uploaded.  But didn't work and I guessed it was because the USB serial cable wasn't supplying enough power.  

Picked up some RaspPi power supplies from Fry's (still open but barely)  And now it works:  

https://photos.app.goo.gl/QhAo3ZfGBmWK5MnFA

Next to do is configure it to AP mode so that it can stream standalone (without connecting to external WIFI)  

Thomas

[tom r lopes]

Ok here.  

School is out so plenty of space and WIFI good.  

Thomas