esp32c3 camera recommendations

[gregrasche]

We are looking at usage of the esp32c3 SOC, and would like to have a fairly fast camera interface. Let's say a camera that can take an image once per second. The camera needs to be a compressed image (ie jpg or mjpg for a series of image) and not raw.

Questions:

1) Does Espressif have a vendor that you have worked with who has a 4 M pixel (or greater) camera that can easily interface to the ESP?
2) What ESP interface (SPI, DVP, I2S, or other) is used?
3) Does Expressif have a SW package to manage the camera?
4) is the esp32s3 now recommended by ESP-AT software group? We can likely use the MINI esp32s3 instead of the SOC if we can get the ESP-AT software and a camera of the quality we want. Esp32c3 is the chip that has been recommended by Expressif for usage with the ESP-AT software package. We must have SPI usage for the ESP-AT package.

[ESP_Sprite]

Why do you want to use a C3 for it? It's a small chip, has limited IO to connect a camera to, and no external RAM connection possibility. I'd start looking at the S3 instead; that one is more likely to fit the bill and has both a parallel camera interface and USB (1.1, full-speed) to connect a camera to, plus the ability to connect external RAM.

[gregrasche]

We are told by Espressif that the ESP-AT code is not recommended on the esp32s2 (now esp32s3). We need to use that code to implement a SPI interface for the AT command interface.

We could likely use the esp32s3 but it appears to be more difficult to get ESP-AT to work over SPI (SPI so we have a high bandwidth AT interface). Camera cost we are shooting for is that the camera cost $10 or less.

Maybe changing to the esp32s3 is the right decision. ESP-AT would be more difficult, but the camera would be easier.

Is there a particular interface on the esp32s3 that we could easily connect a to camera?
Are we restricted to usage of the esp32s3 SOC, rather than the esp32s3 MINI?
Is there a favorite camera that is 1 picture per second or greater, with 4M pixels or more?

[gregrasche]

I found many answers here https://github.com/espressif/esp32-camera

I need to use the DVP port on the esp32s3 SOC for cameras like the OV5640.