Mini Module Camera Shield with OV2640 2 Megapixels Lens Compatible with Arduino UNO Mega2560 Board and Raspberry Pi Pico

We have integrated the Arducam into our product the ImOkBox and have obtained fantastic results. The ArduCAM Mini lives in two worlds and excels in each. In the Arduino world, it is simply a matter a plugging the device into the header and loading the very well written and commented Sketch.(Sketch is the term for an Arduino programming project.) With one of the provided Sketches you can step through the different camera sensor resolutions and capture images to the SD card. The Sketch sends status information through the UART console. The image quality is amazing. This is a high quality image sensor with a great lens. The other world in which the ArduCAM Mini hits the mark is in commercial products. The genius in the ArduCAM design is that they have abstracted away all the complexity of the image sensor data transfer using their FPGA while keeping direct I2C register access to the sensor. Once the I2C registers have been loaded with the suggested settings, a two character command through the SPI port allows you to capture an image then transfer it at your leisure through the SPI. Using the example Sketches and the excellent documentation .PDFs we were able to start "talking" to the sensor from a non-Arduino platform during the first development session. ArduCAM supplies all the suggested I2C register settings for the sensor for various resolutions. So far I have not needed to tweak a single one but if I needed to, it would just be a simple I2C write. Though a previous reviewer is correct that the ArduCAM mini is a little complex for the Raspberry Pi (Note: ArduCAM makes a superb camera just for the Raspberry Pi) the tradeoff for the "complexity" is that if you are comfortable with working with SPI and I2C on a microcontroller, your 8 bit or 32 bit device can now implement crystal clear still photography with just a few SPI and I2C commands. If we'd tried to implement a direct camera sensor interface on 32 bit ARM silicon, we would be months away from a prototype. Instead, today, using the ArduCAM Mini and less than a hundred lines of C we're uploading 1024 x 768 images to our Twitter API application (@imokbox_dovey) every minute of every day using a $2.50 Freescale microcontroller. If you are comfortable with I2C and SPI communication, or you are willing to put in the effort to learn, this camera delivers everything you could ask for in a still camera. The support team is very responsive, the documentation is clear and provides examples and the working code in their Git Hub repository is professional and well commented.

I purchased 16 Arducams from Amazon and 30 more from Arducam directly for a machine vision project of mine. The Arducam is an insightful product that fully standardizes the interface to digital cameras on the I2C and SPI busses such that its users can concentrate on what to do with the images they get instead of how to get those images. Manufacturing quality is high, all of the cameras I received were fully operational. The organization backing the Arducam is active on GitHub, providing both reference software implementations and support for their users. The Arducam is straightforward enough that it can be easily used with an Arduino, however this simple interface means that the Arducam is equally easily integrated with other single board computers such as the Raspberry Pi and the Beaglebone black. It isn’t just a camera for the Arduino, it’s a camera that because it can be easily interfaced to an Arduino, can be easily interfaced to any single board computer, either directly, or through an Arduino if needed for a larger system without exposed SPI/I2C busses. In short, the Arducam brings a plug and play solution to digital cameras at the hardware level. If you want to be able to construct software application that can easily talk to a wide range of cameras without modification, if you need image acquisition to be a straightforward process and not a custom engineering nightmare, this is the solution you want. I believe that as this ‘platform’ evolves, we’ll see an increasing rich set of cameras fronted by the Arducam chip and a steady evolution in the features and capabilities of the Arducam chip itself. In my own application the Arducam has let me integrate a large number of cameras without being buried underneath the details of the implementation, which leaves me free to concentrate on the hard problems, such as building and training the TensorFlow models that consume these images. For that reason alone, I strongly recommend these devices for anyone looking to incorporate digital cameras into their work. The Arducam itself is a unique product, however its greatest value is that it turns the cameras themselves into a commodity, just another part of the project instead of the axle you get wrapped around.

Honestly, great job! I got this delivered about an hour ago and set it up with low expectations because of how things like this can go. Following the instructions, I was able to get everything up and running within an hour. Excited and see what else is capable with this tiny camera, and for the price you really can’t beat the amount of work that I actually went into making this library and everything else function. People want plug-and-play I guess and as far as Arduino goes this is the easiest thing ever. Super happy !!

If you are beginner, or you want a quick camera solution with minimal pin count this product is not for you. If you enjoy micropython, this product is not for you (unless you like translating C header files into python). This particular camera came with a faulty header wire (where one of the wires was broken inside), thus causing me to waste half of a day trouble shooting. I have attempted to contact arducam via their contact page, I got no reply. Their forum sign-up/login process is broken as well. This camera requires using both SPI and I2C. It seems Arducam given up half way on developing this camera, as it requires end-users to bit bang the registers via I2C to get the camera functioning. But that does not stop there, as it also requires further setup process via SPI bus. The Arducam only provide C header files, there is no support for micropython. The whole setup via I2C would not be bad if not for hundreds of register writes that need to happen. This camera needs 8 pins including power and ground. What is worse, this camera is a power hog. It consumes about 100mA (@5V) when it is unconfigured. The "datasheet" lists 70mA(5V) running and 20mA(5V) standby. Even listed 20mA standby is atrocious, it should be in microamps. All I needed is a camera that I can pull still JPEGs from via a simple interface. This is not it.

I am writing a review on this product, not only because every ArduCam product I have bought, including this one, have been of amazing quality, but because their customer service is unmatched. After emailing ArduCam for help with their Sync Stereo Camera HAT, Lee from ArduCam went out of his way to offer me LIVE troubleshooting help! He sat with me for over an hour, incredibly patient, helping me with the most minuscule errors and answered every question I had about the problem. Turns out there was something fundamental I didn't realize about the camera's connectivity, and boom, problem solved. Big shout to ArduCam Customer Support!!! Show your support by buying their amazing products!!

I was hoping to make this work on a Raspberry Pi or a Pico, but found the documentation to be very confusing and ambiguous. I've been working with RP devices for many years, and I couldn't figure this out. Getting this to work is like giving birth to a flaming porcupine. Returning the device.

Best packaging ever for electronic parts on Amazon. The item is working properly after some fights over the wiring. The CS connection drawn in the included schematic is wrong, it should go to D7 on Arduino Uno R3, I tried to modify the Arduino sketch to match the schematic with no luck at all. There must be something hardcoded somewhere in a library, I do not know and I do not have the time/will to bother searching for it. This tiny camera is capable of recording small videos on a SD card and I have to learn now how to record a file remotely on a webserver/ftp server. The host applications are quite bare to say the least, we see a lot of options in the Arduino example sketches which cannot be tested actually: resolution changes, contrast, color, etc... I wish the documentation would be less scarse, it is just a pain to search for hours just to achieve something quite simple.

This guys from Nanjing, China offered the first high resolution SPI camera solution for Arduino and now their code is updated also for Espressif boards (ESP8266 / ESP32). I found this really ideal for a learning project I have that is the FS2 camera you can see in the pictures. Both models, this and the OV5642, offer an easy Serial Parallel Interface where you can read the memory camera to a buffer and then save it or just upload it online in case you use a WiFi ready board. There is enough example code for every board in Arducam github Repositories and you will be ready to see results fast. So I recommend you to get one and try it out!