Mounting bracket for ESP32-CAM WiFi camera rotated by servo motors by andzer

Last crawled date: 3 years, 4 months ago

I don't know the need for such an effort, because WiFi cams are very cheap now..
But, since I had a couple of ESP32-CAM boards, and a lot of other hardware, I decided to design this bracket, mostly as an exercise in my 3D designing skills.
I use FreeCAD as my main drawing tool. After several trial/error print/improve/redesign work this is the 12th version.
The scope is to:
control an ESP32-CAM viewing angle using 2 servo motors (horizontal and vertical)
use a ESP-32 (WeMos D1 Mini or any other controller), to drive motors and control lights
use 4 visible white LEDs
use 4 IR emitting LEDs.
The movement of the horizontal axis is quite simple, and I think will work without major problems. The only strange thing is that, because I first designed horizontal movement, I use 686zz bearing, while in the vertical part I use 624zz. Maybe I'll change this to a later version.
The vertical axis is a big design challenge and a headache.. The idea here is to "hang" the whole structure from a free smoothly moving system, while the vertical servo motor is doing only rotation. I use here 6 vertical bearings, in two groups of 3, and a set of 6 compressing springs. I'm not sure if this design is a stable solution, we'll see.
For assembly you need:
3D printed parts
1 bearing 686zz (horizontal axis)
1 screw M6 Hexagon head * 18mm
4 screws M3 flat head * 12mm (fix front to back eye pieces - maybe have to sand heads)
6 bearings 624zz (vertical axis drum, or maybe replaced with 3D printed)
6 screws M4 button head * 10mm (fix bearings)
6 screws M3 button head * 25mm (fix seal to drum)
6 compression springs (maybe like 1.2X8X40mm, put them outside M3 screws to give some flexibility between seal and drum mounting)
3 screws M3 button head * 25mm (fix drum to dome)
hot glue, instant glue
Connect antenna cable to ESP32-CAM. The dome piece has 2 holes for antennas, close the one.
Use this little thing 'esp32cam-support' to fix lens like showed in photo. Orientate ESP32-CAM board so SD card slot faces the slot on printed part.
Suggested electronics:
1 board ESP32-CAM
1 antenna 2.4g 3dBi WiFi aerial RP-SMA male IPX cable HOJ
1 board ESP32 for driving motors and lights, maybe WeMos D1 Mini
2 micro servo motors MG90S TowerPro (or maybe SG90)
2 transistors 2N2222 (use to drive LEDs)
2 resistors 10K (bias transistors' base)
4 LEDs 5mm round white light
4 LEDs 5mm round IR emitter
8 resistors 150R
external power supply 5V 2A
Information about using ESP32-cam:https://randomnerdtutorials.com/esp32-cam-video-streaming-face-recognition-arduino-ide/https://dronebotworkshop.com/esp32-cam-intro/
Information about drive servos using ESP32:https://youtu.be/zxBC1ivOVfM
Information about Internet-Controlled LED Using ESP32-Based Web Server:https://www.hackster.io/shahizat005/internet-controlled-led-using-esp32-based-web-server-7bea1a