PocketCam Classique

Its done.
Resoldered the entire thing.

However the battery is depleted and im gonna have to charge it so we don’t know if it turns on yet

Soldered the shutter button and one part of the sliding switch, also connected a few more wires. Its almost done (again)

Display has been resoldered

resoldered 2 more wires and added the power system

Resoldered one more wire, and a prev one had come lose so fixed that too

resoldered like 2 wires.

resoldering the camera…
the earlier connections came loose.
and this ones even worse ahhhh

ITS CHARGING MY DUDES.
FINALLY.
LETS GO.
I had accidentally tripped the battery’s protection circuit and wouldn’t work (I had messed it up while trying to charge lmao)

I just resoldered everything.

AND IT WORKS.
LETS GOOOOOOOOOO

bad news.
i messed up the wiring. had to desolder the battery.
will do the rest later

ITS DONE!!!!
soldering and everythign and everything is doneeee.

just gotta put it in a case and call it done. lets go.
finally.

Updated camera enclosure:
This is probably the final design- ig only a few changes will be made later like adding holes for the type c and all.
But yeah.
Its almost done…….

Tried to model a new enclosure but failed horribly. Guess I’ll edit the old one

Messed something up….

[Image from the camera btw]

Im running the cam at 5mp now and it takes like 8s for the thing to save, and sometimes it doesn’t even save, I was tweaking around- changed something, now the image sometimes saves, sometimes doesn’t- wth is happening, the first iteration worked perfectly…?

I fixed the colours on the TFT ( yesterday it looked rlly weird). now its working.

LETS GO.
the prototype is 99% done. just soldering and 3d printing the case left

I FINALLY GOT THE TFT WORKING LETS GOOOO.

this thing was giving me headaches since the past week.
just wouldnt turn on. backlight did.
but no data- glowing rectangle of doom.

I FIXED IT TODAY.
I READ THAT I COULD USE eSPI thingy, change some code, MOST IMPORTANTLY, i wired my DC to IO1…

and it just worked.
im very tired to type out the detailed thing but yeah.
lets go.

I worked a bit more on the cad.
The internal assembly is wayyyy more detailed now. milimeter accurate

I modelled the battery (just a cuboid) and imported the ip5310 from the web.
I messed up the importing a bit and had to manually delete a lot of parts lmao

I made a millimeter accurate cad model of the esp32cam and the tft since i have them in my hands rn.
battery and buck converter remain

I got the camera working.
However… the tft is giving me a bad headache. The screen just won’t work- the backlight turns on and all but its not displaying anything.
I think its cause of the brownout detection, something is fishy.
Working on solving it.

I also messed with the code a bit and my friend helped me write better code.

I successfully flashed the esp32cam after a big big boss battle.

The thing just would not listen or connect or talk.
At the end I gave up, tested it with a multimeter. All evidence pointed towards a defective board.
The thing just wouldn’t communicate! not even over baud 74880, not even garbage characters!- thats usually a dead board.

I tried flashing it like 20 times since yesterday I think. Same cycle.
Upload code, compiling, connecting –> PRESS RST, hope something happens, fail.

I even sent the supplier an email saying I got a defective piece.

The thing is, you gotta flash this board by pressing the “reset RST” button when the arduino ide says “connecting…..”; which obv. did not work for me.

So i give up and get bored and watch a random yt video. in that video, the guy doesnt press the RST button, nope. what he does is yanks out the cable connecting GPIO0 to GND (you gotta wire em to make the board go into flashing mode).
and it worked for him.

I try it.
EUREKA. it goshdarn works.
like holy crap dude, how. wth!!!
i am so goshdarn happy right now that the thing works.

I wrote code for Pocketcam, my friend helped me a lot.

got a ton of errors on the first try.

I had some trouble uploading however, the thing just would not flash the esp32cam. It was getting late at night so I decided to shut down and sleep.

I got a sort of bad breadboard- so i had to manually plug a dupont male header in and out to make it looser.
It was so tight that none of my components went in without feeling like id damage them pushing in

I made a V2 of the camera enclosure.
I think its significantly better than yesterday; looks cleaner and is a bit more ergonomic.

I modelled the entire camera in onshape; including the internal components.
I must admit- the enclosure was the hardest part.
I feel quite productive.

I drew out the rough circuit diagram in diagram.net of how the wiring/circuitry for the cam. would look like.

Today I used Lego to try to see how small I could make my retro pocketcam.
I first drew out the dimensions of the components (3.7v 500mah LiPo, ESP32CAM + OV5640 Camera, IP5310 Boost Converter)

I then opened my big box o’ legos and tried to match the paper sketch with appropriate pieces.
Although I did make them a tad bit bigger cause tolerances exist, I think its nice.