I'm looking for a decent wireless WiFi camera

Projects General Guidance
1

I want to buy a small camera that I can mount to my Arduino robot car.
This is for indoor use.

I already looked at and sent back the ESP32 camera because it gave a terrible picture. Something wrong with the design of the antenna I read.

I have also read that the Arduino is not fast enough at transmitting video so I was thinking a self contained camera unit.
I searched Google for a rechargeable mini WiFi camera and there's a ton of them. Most of them still have USB power wires, or get really bad reviews so I thought I'd ask here.

I want to to transmit the video back to my PC over a web browser, and not have to have a phone app or pay some monthly fee because it's not for home security. Most of the cameras on Amazon look like they work but either require a monthly fee or you have to watch them on a smart phone.

I was thinking if the camera had an IP address I could view it on a web browser with some code.

I even looked up radio controlled FOV cameras too. My price range is under $100.

Any ideas? I know someone else has done this. Thanks ahead of time...

2

Your end objective is unclear, and who knows what sort of size you are talking about, but there is probably a great swag of pocket cameras out there that may save you from trying to re-invent the wheel - if you can forego the web browser, as I imagine they all use a proprietary phone app.
No problem with image quality though, and no need to involve Arduino either.

3

Drone FPV cameras are plentiful, cheap and popular.

4

I have a few dozen esp32 cameras, the quality is not that bad for the 2MP and quite acceptable for the 5MP.

5

Does the data flow need to go through an Arduino ?

6

Why would the 'antenna' affect the operation of the camera ?

You can take a picture and save it to SD card, no need for or operation of the 'antenna' at all, so its difficult to see how something that's not in use could affect the camera.

If your referring to the ESP32CAM, then you can use better cameras than the OV2640 thats supplied with the ESP32CAM.

7

Have you considered a Raspberry Pi Zero W or Zero 2 W? Lots of better quality cameras available for those.

8

Any links or details ?

9

I would agree.

The OV3660 is better and the OV5640 is better still.

10

Check out the products from Arducam, they have a wide variety of cameras that work on a variety of architectures like esp and pi. They are better quality but also more expensive.
That being said, I have seen the esp32-cam used on robot cars. Yes it's a 2MP camera but can be upgraded to 5MP. The app dor the esp32 uses wifi and all you need is a web browser. The app has a fairly comprehensive UI that can be minimised. I don't understand what problem you had with the esp32 but I have at least a dozen for trail cams I am designing. You are not going to get 4K HDR at these prices, but it can work and probably hundreds in use in various cars already

11

First off, thank you all for the suggestions, as I'm clearly in the dark on this.

Sorry all, if I was unclear. The way the Arduino fits into the picture is that it will be the motor controller for the car itself.
Here's my vision. The car should be totally wireless like a moon rover and transmits its data to the PC. I'll have a control panel built from C# or Python on one monitor and a live video feed on the other. This is why I didn't want a phone app.

I should be able to control it from my PC via Bluetooth or WIFI connection but I need to have a video feed if it goes out of the room.
I also looked into GPS but that is unreliable indoors, (not its fault). Been down that road.

The car is about 12 inches by 6 inches and has 2 wheels and a rear caster. I built it from a chassis kit and added the rest of the electronics. I plan on maybe using an ESP32 in the mix too, to experiment with as that can serve as a web server.

The Arduino is not in any way used to transmit the video feed.

@jremington , I looked at these and they seem to require a video screen at the receiving end. They are my last resort, but not out of the running.

Nope, @sonofcy, from what I read, the Arduino is way too slow to supply the data connection.

@srnet, no link, as I was hoping someone else had done this. It seemed like a really easy task in my head. rofl.
Actually the hard part was getting the car to move straight because one of the wheel motors are slightly faster then the other one, but a set of infra red encoders attached to the wheels and a bit of math fixed that issue.

And I'll take a look at the OV3660 and the OV5640, because the ones I ordered from Amazon didn't work as expected.

Aideepen ESP32 Cam W-BT Camera Module

Aideepen ESP32-CAM W-BT Board ESP32-CAM-MB Micro USB to Serial Port CH-340G with OV2640 2MP Camera

As to the antenna. The reason for that was I wanted it to transmit all the time while the car was running.
I remember there was a bug in the board in one of the components that wasn't shielded and was causing interference with transmitting data. It transmitted a really grainy picture and If you put your finger on the component and pressed it, it would go away. I searched about a week to get that far, (a few You Tubes) then I returned the unit.
If there's an upgraded board, I'm all in. The ESP32 is a killer piece of hardware, and I still have 2 other (non camera) boards.

@PaulRB, I haven't looked into Raspberry Pi Zero W yet. I Googled it but it looks like just a board. I don't see a camera in the picture but I totally open to suggestions.
Raspberry Pi is on my list to play with.

To @sonofcy. I hope this answers you too.
Could it have been 2 bad units? And no, I'm not expecting 4K HDR at all. lol. 720p or 1080p would be great. 5MP will work too. It's a "play" project after all. :slightly_smiling_face:
I'll take a look at Arducam and see if their products are better then what I can find on Amazon.

14

It is, but it has a CSI camera interface. You can buy many cameras that connect to the Pi with a flexible flat cable.

https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-zero-w/
https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-zero-2-w/
https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/camera-module-v2/
https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/camera-module-3/
https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-high-quality-camera/

15

Thanks @PaulRB. I'm looking at those on Amazon. If I do go Pi, can the signal be transmitted via WiFi? I'm reading to see.