Bringing the ESP32 camera video stream to the web!

The Arduino ESP32-Camera test sketch only lets you use the stream on your local network. To get the stream to the web, you need a bit more...

This collection of scripts consists of:

• Arduino code for ESP32 camera module (AI Thinker CAM) websocket_camera_stream.ino
• Python code to receive the images via websockets with receive_stream.py
• Python code to push the most recent image to a website with send_image_stream.py

I havent found a working repository that streams ESP32 camera images in real time to a web backend. This sovles this issue.

1. Open the ESP32 code in your Arduino IDE, install all missing libraries, change the ssid, password and websockets_server_host. Upload the code to you ESP32 AI Thinker Cam board. Please test the Arduino camera example before you test this code!

2. Install the missing python requirements using pip: pip install pillow websockets flask asyncio

3. Run python receive_stream.py You should get a constant stream of numbers (sizes of images). The image.jpg in the directory is always the latest received image.

4. Open a second terminal and run python send_image_stream.py You should get a response by flask with an IP and port to enter in your browser.

Now enjoy your fresh live stream! 📺

This is solved using the placeholder.jpg. It just replaces the image, if the backend receives a broken frame to prevent the browser from freezing the stream.

There are many ESP32 Camera modules. The defined pins in websocket_camera_stream.ino only work with the AI Thinker Cam. Change this, if you have a different board. The only tested camera is currently the OV2640.