With a PS3 style controller connected to an Acebott ESP32 Smart Car my next task was getting the add QD002 ACEBOTT ESP32 Camera Expansion pack for Smart Car working.

I had previously tried to get an Arducam Mega 3MP working and failed miserably, but was highly motivated to overcome that setback with a purpose built camera add on in the Acebott QD002.

Things did not get off to a great start because the connection process required the camera to be connected to the UART port of the driver board.

The problem with that is the UART port conflicts with the serial port for uploads and monitoring. This mean hat I needed to disconnect the camera UART connection every time I wanted to update my code and then with it reconnected there was no real way to monitor the result. I either need to go to great lengths to program up and connected a different UART on the board or find another solution.

The easiest solution was to simply upload the code on the ESP32 camera to enable a web server to stream the code directly from the camera board. You’ll find that code here:

https://github.com/directorcia/Azure/blob/master/Iot/Acebott/Smartcar/QD002/ACEBOTT%20QD002%20Camera%20Car%20V3.8/webcam.cpp

and the documentation for it here:

https://github.com/directorcia/Azure/blob/master/Iot/Acebott/Smartcar/QD002/ACEBOTT%20QD002%20Camera%20Car%20V3.8/webcam.md

Thus, the camera board will boot, connect to WiFi, run a web server, report that IP address to the serial console of the web camera board and then stream the camera video there.

I cannot tell you how satisfying it was to finally seeing streamed images on my screen. It had taken a long time to to get here but now, finally, I was ready to finish assembly of the car and mount camera onto it!