Hi I have a project to make a spy camera pen, so a small circuit with a camera ("Compact Camera Module"), a microcontroller and an sd card ending after several searches on google, on forums and sites, I understand that it's not as simple as i thought, i looked for how to use a small camera like those found in phones with a programmable microcontroller like attiny or atmega but i learn that they are not not powerful enough then I thought of the ESP32 Cam but its dimensions do not suit me and I do not see the point of buying something already manufactured, so I wonder which programmable microcontroller to choose to be able to control a camera and make the circuit myself or otherwise modify the circuit of the ESP32 Cam to give it a suitable size. My first concern is the camera and later I will see for the sd card. I don't really know how to go about it and I want to learn more about microcontrollers and SoCs/PSoCs. (Sorry for my level of English).
A camera like that, but I don't know if it's possible and if I have to use another circuit for the camera or if I can directly use it with a microcontroller.
You've not said if your project will only require still images or video. Still images require a lot less processor power than video images.
If you want to record video, then you need to decide on an acceptable frame rate and video resolution.
I may be wrong about this, but for us hobbyist tinkerers, we only have access to SD cards via a relatively slow SPI bus. The big manufacturers have access to a higher speed way of accessing SD cards.
It's the speed at which you can transfer data to the SD card. The higher the frame rate and the higher the resolution, the more data you have to write per second to avoid dropping frames etc.
Is it possible to send the video stream by bluetooth or wifi to a more powerful receiver which records the video in an sd card but with a faster transfer ? it must be possible to do that with the ESP32 Cam and I just found the diagram so by modifying the layout of the components it should be possible, right ?
It doesn't matter i think 10 fps would be enough for me.
I'm just looking for which microcontroller or small SoC I can use with a small camera and store a video on sd card or transfer it by bluetooth/wifi/radio. 10 fps and 480p video is fine for me.