1rst project - need help picking the components - Garden camera, wifi remote control

Projects General Guidance
1

Hello, this would be my first project touching anything electronic. I know how to code a bit but that is it.

Goal: Make a camera to watch a garden mainly (we have animals stealing our crops) and add a bunch of features to it.

  • Night vision
  • Accessible via wifi
  • could use battery or direct wall current
  • want to add something I could activate remotely to scare the animal(s) like a light and or sound.
  • I would also like to be able to add one or 2 motors for fun so I can move the view via wifi too.
  • Alerts when it detects movement (could probably do that by code, no need for a movement detector).

Not sure what components I would need and what I should start with. Also, I am not sure if I should start with this project or try one of those kits or something similar first to get my feet wets first :smile:

Thank you!

2

Does the wind blow where you are watching?

3

Then don’t start with this as you need to learn to walk first.

Get an UNO kit.

Okay, you can look at this site in the meantime.

4

Not much but I think I know where you are going with that question. I was thinking of detecting movement by calculating the average of the pixels. There is already a project fir surveillance camera that is open source out there and it use something like that. Not sure if I can use it on an arduino though.

5

To be honest you are probably better off buying a domestic CCTV system with hard disc recording - they have remote access etc and just work.

6

It would be less expensive but not as much fun. It could build something that won't be integrated but that I could still remotely activate though.

7

Research ESP32-CAM
There are lots of vision and recording projects for those already, but @hammy is correct in steering you to a commercial product as this is a real issue that you're trying to solve.
There's nothing that says that you can't do both.
Start with the commercial product and build yours to work along side of it.

3 Likes
8

I know it's already out here but doing it yourself is cooler no? :slight_smile: I already stumbled on the ESP32 but no night vision sadly. Also it looks slow, not a lot of frames.

I am wondering if there is a commercial product that has an API or is open source.

I could also build a crawler that would watch the commercial product interface... That could work.

9

If you know how to code a bit then I'd get a commercial camera and work on using python for image and video analysis.
There are other forums where you can get better help on those topics.
I certainly wouldn't want to discourage you but ESP32 is about top of the mark for Arduino compatible imaging unless you go into the couple hundred dollars range. So far as I know anyway.
You could check out some raspberry pi solutions but that would also be drifting away from Arduino and take you to other forums.

10

This topic was automatically closed 180 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.