I got a few from ali express. Hard to beat on price. And yes just power with 5v and connect via wifi.
I’ve been wanting to make some “sensors” but sadly haven’t gotten to it.
Things like pointing a camera at a dial indicator for a DRO seems really dumb on one hand, but adding digital readout capability for $5 is weirdly good value.
I have one of those! It’s amazing that it can pack a working cam and a web-server in such a small package. BUT - the camera is really lousy at low light conditions. I haven’t really tried it with sufficient light. I can try it out and let you know, if you want me to!
Edit: if you want better visuals, but small build sizes, you can try a zero w with a raspicam!
They aren’t good in low light, but actually work quite nicely for monitoring my 3D printers. I am quite happy with mune and intend to use one on my Primo to record video, in conjunctio with an LED flood light.
They are super light weight, and with a simple 5V power supply connect to wifi and can stream images.
One downside is the example camera sketch does not automatically stream images, gou havr to turn that on srparately, and it wont handle reqursts from multiple browsers simultaneously.
I have one in my garage. I program it with esphome. It isn’t great, but you get a little less than one low res picture every second.
Those are the esp32-s3, which is not the same as the esp32, FYI.
That board has a built in USB, which is nice the first time you flash it. I update mine over wifi. Mine also has a built in microsd card (which I am not using). But it is nive to use on microsd projects too (but make sure you are flashing it as an S3).
I ordered two of them, one to spy on my wife and one for the CNC. I also ordered 1000 3x1mm magnets, because they were as expensive as 15 (!) would have been on Amazon Germany. I am planning to create some hardwood life counters for MTG etc. I tried a design with a printed centerpiece that makes the counter “clicky” and not able to spin by accident. It works, but I’d rather have a counter without printed parts.
I have a couple dozen esp32 and esp8266 devices on my network. They are great for a lot of things, but cameras are not one of them. If you want a low res timelapse than it’ll do, but don’t expect to stream more than a couple frames per second.