2019 International Conference on Computing, Mathematics and Engineering Technologies – iCoMET 2019

ESP32 Based Smart Surveillance System

Pertab Rai Murk Rehman
Biomedical Engineering Biomedical Engineering
Mehran University of Engineering and Technology Mehran University of Engineering and Technology
Jamshoro, Pakistan Jamshoro, Pakistan
[email protected] [email protected]

Abstract— Surveillance systems have been essential part of interfacing of Arducam-Mini 2MP and 5MP camera modules
industries, factories, organizations and homes. They actually to serve the Internet of Things (IoT) applications [4]. The board
provide additional assistance in the work of security personnel can be programmed by both Arduino Integrated Development
because of information storing capabilities. In addition, they also Environment (IDE) and Espressif Software Development Kit
provide extreme assistance in various automation processes of (ESP-SDK). Fig. 1 shows Arducam ESP32 UNO board.
chemical industries where continuous monitoring of certain
chemical reactions is mandatory. The installation of such systems
at the cost of meager amount is the need of hour for controlling
theft and avoiding any disastrous action. In this paper we have
proposed the hardware and software implementation of smart
surveillance system using the Espressif’s latest microcontroller
ESP32. The proposed implementation acquires continuous video,
transmits using integrated Wi-Fi capabilities of aforementioned
microcontroller and display on SPI TFT Module connected on
receiving end.

Keywords— Espressif; ESP32; Microcontroller; Surveillance;

Wi-Fi

I. INTRODUCTION Fig. 1. Arducam ESP32 UNO Board

Recent advancements in microcontroller technology have B. Arducam-Mini-2MP Camera Module

enhanced the capabilities and overall functioning of Arducam Mini camera module is Serial Peripheral Interface
surveillance systems by providing additional features such as (SPI) device. It integrates Omnivision CMOS OV2640 image
live streaming over distance, augmenting android applications sensor [5]. The camera module utilized in this implementation
[1], interfacing sensors for actuating mechanism [2], storage is of 2MP and has lens size of ¼ inch. It captures low
capabilities, cost effectiveness and easier implementation. resolution images at 3~10 frames per second in Joint Picture
Additionally, implementation of various algorithms such as Expert Group (JPEG) format. This camera module can be
Background Subtraction Technique for detection of connected with commercially available microcontrollers if they
unattended objects [3] can provide additional layer of security support either SPI or I-squared-C interface. Because of its
in the sensitive areas. The objective of the suggested miniaturized size it is also suitable for portable devices. Table I
implementation is to benefit end user with aforementioned summarizes the pin definition of camera module [6]. Fig. 2
features by assembling surveillance system in one complete shows the front and back view of camera module.
package using Internet of Things (IoT) enabled devices. The
proposed implementation acquires low resolution video using
detachable Arducam-Mini-2Mega Pixels (MP) camera module
which is interfaced with Arducam ESP32 UNO board.
Acquired video is transmitted using integrated Wi-Fi of
ESP32 and video is displayed on Adafruit 1.8-inches SPI TFT
display module.

II. COMPONENTS

A. Arducam ESP32 UNO

The Arducam ESP32 UNO board comes in the shape of
standard Arduino UNO R3 board but instead of ATmega328P
microcontroller, it is powered by powerful chipset of Espressif
ESP-WROOM-32. This board is specially designed for the Fig. 2. Arducam-Mini-2MP Front and Back View

978-1-5386-9509-8/19/$31.00 ©2019 IEEE

 TABLE I III. EXPERIMENTAL SETUP
Pin Definition of Arducam-Mini-2MP The experimental setup for the proposed implementation
Pin No. Pin Name Type Description
is divided into two sections.
1 CS Input SPI slave chip select input
A. HARDWARE IMPLEMENTATION
2 MOSI Input SPI master output slave input The Arducam-Mini-2MP camera module connected with
3 MISO Output SPI master input slave output Arducam ESP32 UNO board is shown in Fig. 5. It acquires
video and transmits data packets via Universal Datagram
4 SCLK Input SPI Serial Clock Protocol (UDP). Data packets are transmitted to ESP32
5 GND Ground Power Ground development board which is configured as a soft access point
(AP). Received packets are first decoded using JPEG decoder
6 +5V Power 5 Volt Power Supply library and then displayed on SPI TFT LCD. Fig. 6 shows the
7 SDA
Bi- Two-Wire Serial Interface data SPI TFT LCD interfacing with ESP32. Table II provides pin
directional I/O definition of TFT LCD pins and its connectivity with General
8 SCL Input Two-Wire Serial Interface Clock Purpose Input Output (GPIO) of ESP32.

C. Adafruit SPI TFT Display Module

The 1.8-inches SPI Thin Film Transistor (TFT) Liquid
Crystal Display (LCD) module has color pixels of .
This module integrates ST7735R TFT driver and can display
full 18-bit color. It is the excellent choice for prototyping of
electronic projects and laboratory experiments. Fig. 3 shows
the front and back view respectively of display module used in
this project.

Fig. 5. Arducam ESP32 UNO Connected With Camera Module

Fig. 3. Adafruit 1.8 inches SPI TFT Display Module

D. Espressif ESP32 Development Board

ESP32 development board is the essential part of this
project. Numerous models have been designed by Espressif
and its counterparts. The board used in this project is ESP32
Development Kit (ESP32 DevKitC). The board has integrated
2.4 GHz Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Low Energy Bluetooth (BLE) and 4
Mega Bytes (MB) of flash memory [7]. Because of its
aforementioned features, among many others, the board is
ultimate choice of electronic hobbyist and professionals. Fig. 4
shows the Espressif ESP32 Development board.
Fig. 6. SPI TFT LCD Interface with ESP32

TABLE II
SPI TFT LCD Interfacing with ESP32
S.NO TFT LCD PIN DEFINITION ESP 32 GPIO NUMBER
1 Chip Select : CS GPIO 5

2 Serial Clock : SCK GPIO 18

3 Serial Data Line: SDA GPIO 23

4 Register Selector: RS GPIO 2

5 Reset: RST RST

Fig. 4. Espressif ESP32 Development Board
B. SOFTWARE IMPLEMENTATION
Proposed hardware is programmed by Arduino 1.8.7 IDE
installed on Microsoft Windows 10, 32 bit operating system.
However, to program the ESP32 development board using
Arduino IDE, the ESP32 Arduino core has to be installed first
from GitHub [8]. Transmission side exploits Arducam library
for video acquisition, Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi UDP libraries for
transmission of data and SPI library for communication
between microcontroller and camera module. Adafruit
graphics, SPI and JPEG decoder libraries are used to display
video on TFT LCD along with Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi UDP for
receiving of data packets. JPEG library provides information
of images such as height, width and converts images into Fig. 9. Arducam ESP32 Connects to Soft Access Point
Bitmap (BMP) format for display on SPI TFT LCD.

IV. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS

The designed prototype can be easily deployed for
surveillance in the short range. Both the transmitting and
receiving modules communicate using integrated Wi-Fi. In the
experimental setup ESP32 development board is connected to
port COM 4, Arducam ESP32 UNO is connected to port COM
6 and both are configured at baud rate. Arduino serial
monitor results are presented here in four steps. Initially,
ESP32 board is configured as soft access point as shown in Fig.
7. Then JPEG decoder library extracts incoming data packets,
displays the information of packets on serial monitor and
Fig. 10. Received Video Displayed on SPI TFT LCD Module
converts them in bitmap images for display as shown in Fig. 8.
Lastly, transmitting module acquires video and connects to soft
access point for transmission of data packets as shown in Fig. V. CONCLUSION
9. Fig. 10 shows the deployed system display streamed video The proposed implementation uses IoT enabled devices
over network on SPI TFT display module. and provides end user with cost effective and portable smart
surveillance system. Suggested implementation successfully
works within the vicinity of soft access point and can be easily
implemented at the cost of meager amount.

FUTURE DIRECTION
The presented work can be extended by employing high
resolution camera and algorithms can be implemented for
detection of objects and movement. In addition, instead of
integrated Wi-Fi, configured as an access point, Long Range
(LORA) wireless data communication technology can be
implemented to overcome the limited vicinity issue.

Fig. 7. ESP32 Configured as Soft Access Point REFERENCES

[1] M. Sharma and S. C. Gupta, “An Internet of Things Based Smart
Surveillance and Monitoring System using Arduino,” 2018 Int. Conf.
Adv. Comput. Commun. Eng., no. June, pp. 428–433, 2018
[2] A. Jain, S. Basantwani, O. Kazi, and Y. Bang, “Smart surveillance
monitoring system,” 2017 Int. Conf. Data Manag. Anal. Innov. ICDMAI
2017, pp. 269–273, 2017.
[3] S. Hargude and S. R. Idate, “I-Surveillance : Intelligent Surveillance
System Using Background Subtraction Technique,” Proc. - 2nd Int. Conf.
Comput. Commun. Control Autom. ICCUBEA 2016, vol. 1, 2017.
[4] ArduCam ESP32 UNO User Guide - ArduCam
[5] CMOS OV2640 Camera Module Datasheet – OmniVision
[6] http://www.arducam.com/arducam-mini-released/
[7] https://www.espressif.com/en/products/hardware/esp32-devkitc/overview
[8] https://github.com/espressif/arduino-esp32/blob/master/docs/arduino-
Fig. 8. Information of Received Data Packets Extracted By JPEG Library ide/windows.md