I am building an item with fairly simple functionality, however the main thrust here is that the system needs to be as cheap as possible, Im sure that i could easily achieve all that is necessary with a Raspberry Pi Zero W, but its really too expensive and still overkill I think. I Need a chipset to communicate with a camera module, then transmit that camera data via wifi or bluetooth to an app on a smart phone, the chipset would also ideally have an accelerometer and gyroscope and communicate that data via wifi to an app on a smart phone. The chipset would be able to be battery powered and run of mains power, via mini USB power cord, or a power pack, the battery would also be charged through this method.
I have seen things like this in smart home, body weighing scales, these might retail for 19.99, so the chipsets in them must not be expensive.
If anyone can point me in the direction of a fit for purpose system and or core chipset i can plug the camera and battery into then it would be immensely helpful, been searching around and scratching my head on this for a while now.
Do a web search for “ESP32 camera” and you will find some interesting results that are rather cheap.
I like ESP32 and have several dev boards as well as parts. Entire dev boards are under $10. If you already have 3.3V LDO regulator in your design, all you really need beyond a few passives is the ESP32 SOC, a WiFi and/Bluetooth antenna (separate part or serpentine trace depending on your performance requirements), a battery management chip, and an IMU. These are all cheap in onesies and depending on what support you already have the incremental add to the BOM should be a few dollars.
ESP32 got a lot right, including secure OTA updates with fallback for failed updates. Means that it’s at least possible to contribute to a world with an internet of (at least a few) secure things.
The 16-bit ESP8266 is even cheaper, but with the mainstreaming of ESP32 I wouldn’t base new work on the old platform. I think the world has moved on now.
Bangood can got down to $7 for the combo. Here is a link on Amazon.
https://www.amazon.com/YOTHG-Bluetooth-ESP32-CAM-Wireless-Development/dp/B07NQLZC2Y
Thank you for the replies and suggestions, i was actually looking at the ESP8266 this morning so the ESP32 is very interesting will do some research. Forgive me as i am new to this but could i just get a wireless chipset, 2.4Ghz/5Ghz dual band 802.11ac realtek rtl8811au chipset wifi module, for example and plug a camera in to it directly? or it doesnt work like that lol. I hope that this set up can go in to an actual mass producable product one day.
Thank you
You need some sort of processor. The ESP32 and ESP8266 modules like the one I linked to should give you all you need, I believe. There are Youtube videos on the matter too. Else than that, I suppose you could try looking into arduino chips interfacing with a wifi chip but I get the feeling you might spend more than $12 by the time the parts are added up.
I came across this tonight:
This may help for part of this project:
ESP32-CAM Video Streaming and Face Recognition with Arduino IDE | Random Nerd Tutorials
Thank you for your input really very useful, i have been talking to suppliers about the add on boards batteries etc i can or cant add, they are useless in their product knowledge lol, just “you buy now! or silence”