ESP32 CAM (AI Thinker) can do either camera or everything else but not together

ESPHome
1

Hi everyone,

I just got the AI Thinker module, and managed to get the camera going. I can also do other stuff (e.g. WiFi signal sensor), but any attempt to have them together makes the camera fail with:

[E][esp32_camera:093]:   Setup Failed: ERROR

And no additional info. After this happens once, I have to reflash a configuration that just has the camera, unplug the module from power and plug it again.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

2

Ok, question: what are you trying to achieve ?
The ESP32 is actually quite underpowered for the camera module they put on the board, so it can’t do a lot (or much of anything really) besides the camera part.
Maybe what you’re trying is totally possible, but to me it’s not really apparent what you’re trying…

3

Nothing major, mostly GPIO stuff, but even adding a single GPIO binary switch causes it to fail.
What’s interesting though, is that I can increase the success rate by reducing idle_framerate, but after it successfully boots, I can get the full 10fps frame rate in HA, so it doesn’t seem like a processing power problem.

4

Most of the GPIO is already used on the board, so if you haven’t researched which pins to use on the board I’d advice you to search which pin to use. Yes, the ESP32-cam has header pins for GPIO that are already in use internally. What can I say, it’s so cheap for a reason…
In case you’ve already excluded that, how is your board powered ?
Mine worked a lot more stable on 5v USB compared to 3.3v (just a wild guess though).
The 5v pin is on the other side of the board by the way, so please don’t put 5v on the 3.3v pin :wink:

5

If you’re not using an SD card you actually have 6-7 free GPIOs (that’s why I picked the AI Thinker). However, when I get the camera to work, they seem to be erratic, so I think I’ll have no choice but to order another regular ESP32 for the non camera stuff.

I’m powering through 5v, on the correct pin :slight_smile: