Camera
A camera on the board, and anyone you allow can take a picture with it. Point the board at a bird feeder, a garden or a workbench, and a visitor on a laptop, or on an Atari 800 from 1979, types SNAPSHOT and has the photo a few seconds later.
The Freenove camera board and the ESP32-CAM are on the installer, the Freenove from firmware 1.1.0 and the ESP32-CAM as a preview, an early build out for testing. The ESP32-S3 camera board goes on once it has been tested.
What you need
- One of the camera boards: the Freenove ESP32 camera board, the ESP32-CAM or an ESP32-S3 camera board. The camera is on the board, so there is nothing to wire. They are side by side in choosing a camera board, and two ESP32-S3 boards in preview, the Waveshare 2 inch and the ETH, carry an OV5640 camera too.
- Whichever camera your Freenove came with. Its sensor varies between batches: Freenove's documents name an OV2640, and Rob's kit came with a GalaxyCore GC0308, which takes 640x480 pictures at most and has no JPEG encoder, so the board encodes each photo itself. The firmware works with either, and the
CAMERAcommand names the one it found. - A micro SD card in the board's slot. Photos are kept on the card, and without one the camera does not start.
- Somewhere worth pointing it, within reach of a USB power supply. A phone charger will do.
Taking a picture
Type SNAPSHOT, or SNAP for short, at the main prompt.
- It takes the picture straight away. There is no countdown: whoever typed it is somewhere else, not in front of the lens. On a board with a GC0308 the photo takes a few seconds to save, because the board encodes it itself.
- It tells you the photo's file name, that it is in the Photos file area, and how many more you may take this hour and today.
- It asks
Download it now? [Y]es [X]modem [N]o. Y sends the photo at once by YMODEM and X by plain XMODEM, the same way as any download from the file areas, so the picture is on your machine seconds after you asked for it. N takes you back to the prompt, and the photo stays in Photos.
A caller who may take pictures but not download them is told where the photo went and is not asked. A photo is a JPEG, which a PC terminal can save and open: an 8-bit machine can take the picture, and looking at it is a job for a PC.
What size photos can I take?
It depends on the camera on the board. A board offers only the sizes its camera, and its build, can take, and the sysop picks one of them under Resolution in the settings below.
- The ESP32-CAM: up to 1600x1200, from its 2 megapixel OV2640.
- The Freenove camera board: it depends on the camera fitted. With a GC0308, 320x240 or 640x480. With an OV2640, from firmware 1.1.1, up to 1600x1200, the same as the ESP32-CAM.
- The ESP32-S3 camera board: up to 2048x1536 expected, from its 3 megapixel OV3660, once it has been tested.
On both the Freenove and the ESP32-CAM the camera is a module on a ribbon, so it can be swapped for another. The CAMERA command names the camera the board found.
The three are side by side, with what each costs and what is on it, in choosing a camera board.
Photos, file area 12
Every picture goes into Photos, file area 12, reached from FILES like any other area. As shipped, everybody can see and download the photos in it, guests included, and the sysop can change that.
The sysop also chooses how photos are named: by the date and time, by the date and time with the handle of whoever took it, or in a folder for each caller, so you can find your own pictures.
Limits
- 10 pictures an hour and 20 a day for each caller. Every snap says where you stand, and at the limit the board says when the next one is allowed.
- A guest is counted by address as well as by handle, so hanging up and calling back under another name does not start the count again.
- The sysop is not counted.
The limits, and how long photos are kept, are on CONFIG photos:
Before you point it at anything
A camera callers can use is a window into the room it is in, open to whoever the sysop lets through. That is the whole of the risk, and it is worth getting right before any of the settings below.
- Nobody can use it until the sysop says so. It is off until it is switched on, and then, as shipped, only staff may take a picture.
- Staff hear about every snap. Each member of staff on the board sees a line naming the node that took one.
- A light can tell the room. The camera can light a pixel, or an LED on a spare pin, while it takes a picture. The Freenove board has no light of its own for this, so it is off as shipped: wire one and switch it on if the people in the room should know when a picture is taken.
- The pictures stay on your card, not on anybody's server. A picture leaves the board when a caller downloads it, and from their machine it can go anywhere, like any file.
Low risk is not no risk, and the difference is what is in frame.
A lens cap is the only real guarantee. A setting can be changed by anybody who has the sysop password; a cap over the lens cannot. Point it at the bird feeder, not the sofa, and cap it when the room is private.
Settings
CONFIG camera, the sysop's alone. The flash, the timelapse and the picture adjustments are pages of their own inside it.
| Setting | What it does | As shipped |
|---|---|---|
| On | Whether the camera runs at all. | Off |
| Snapshot level | Who may take a picture, from everybody, guests included, up to the sysop alone. | Staff |
| Photos level | Who may see and download the photos in areas 12 and 13. | Everybody |
| Resolution | The sizes the board's camera can take: see what size photos can I take. | 640x480 on the Freenove |
| Quality | How sharp the JPEG is, 4 to 40, where lower is sharper. | 12 |
| Watermark | The board's name, the date and who took it, in a corner. | On |
| Name snaps | By date, by date and handle, or a folder for each handle. | By date |
| Keep caller snaps for | Days before a caller's photo is removed. 0 keeps them however old. | 30 days |
| Max caller snaps | How many callers' photos are kept. 0 is no limit. | 200 |
| Card space floor | Free space the camera always leaves on the card for the file areas, the forums and the backups. | 10% of the card or 512 MB, whichever is smaller |
| Flash | Off, a pixel lit white, or a pin driven high for an LED, a relay or a flash unit, while a picture is taken. | Off |
| Timelapse every | Minutes and seconds between the board's own pictures, up to a day. 0 is off, and anything under 10 seconds is 10. | Off |
| Keep timelapse for, max timelapse shots | The same two rules for the timelapse's pictures. | 7 days, 200 |
| Flip, mirror, brightness, contrast, colour, exposure, white balance, effect | For a camera mounted upside down, looking through a mirror, or in a dim room. | Off, or the sensor's own |
The oldest photos go first when any of the last four rules bites, and the timelapse's go before callers' pictures when the card is short of room.
Timelapse
Set Timelapse every and the board takes pictures by itself: once a minute for an afternoon of clouds going over, once an hour for a month of a garden growing. They go into Timelapse, file area 13, with their own keep rules, so a fast timelapse never pushes out the pictures callers took. The shortest interval is 10 seconds, because the camera has to start up for each picture.
From firmware 1.2.0, a camera sat, a camera for any board with an SD card, can take one the moment a motion sensor sees something, for the visitor at the feeder nobody was watching for.
What goes wrong
SNAPSHOTis an unknown command. The camera is switched off inCONFIG camera, or there is no card in the slot: without a card the camera does not start.- It says the card is too full. The camera keeps the card's free space above the floor in the settings by removing the oldest photos first. When it still cannot make room, it refuses the picture rather than eat the space the file areas, the forums and the backups use.
- It says you have reached your limit. It also says when the next picture is allowed.
- The picture is upside down or back to front. Turn on Flip or Mirror.