This sketch is a fully customizable webcam server based on an ESP32-S/ESP32-S3-based board with a camera. It can be used as a starting point for your own webcam solution.

There are many other variants of a webcam server for these modules online, but most are created for a specific scenario and are not good for general, casual, webcam use.

• Extended options for default network and camera settings
• Configuration through the web browser, including initial WiFi setup
• Save and restore settings in JSON configuration files
• Dedicated stream viewer
• Over The Air firmware updates
• Optimizing the way how the video stream is processed, thus allowing higher frame rates on high resolution.
• Using just one IP port, easy for proxying.
• Multi-streaming support (display video in two or more browser sessions)
• Supporting basic authentication
• Uses the ESP Async Web Server for handling user interface asyncronously.
• Storing web pages as separate HTML/CSS/JS files on the storage (can be either a micro SD flash memory card or the built-in flash filesystem). This greatly simplifies development of the interface. Basically, one can swap the face of this project just by replacing files on storage file system.
• Introducing a standard way of attaching and controlling PWM output on the board for different scenarios involving servos and motors
• Making unattended snapshot and sending it to a specified e-mail address
• Compact size of the sketch and low memory utilization
• Support of new ESP32-S3 board (LILYGO T-SIMCAM)

The sketch has been tested on the following boards:

• AI Thinker ESP32-CAM module.
• LILYGO T-SIMCAM

Other ESP32-S/ESP32-S3 boards equipped with a camera may be supported/compatible but not guaranteed. The list of supported borads is in the app_config.h.

The sketch has been tested on the following camera models:

• OV2640 (default)
• OV3660

Other camera models are not supported but may work with some limitations.

The ESP32 itself is susceptible to the usual list of WiFi problems, not helped by having small antennas, older designs, congested airwaves and demanding users. The majority of disconnects, stutters and other communication problems are simply due to 'WiFi issues'.

The AI-THINKER camera module & esp32 combination is quite susceptible to power supply problems affecting both WiFi connectivity and Video quality; short cabling and decent power supplies are your friend here; also well cooled cases and, if you have the time, decoupling capacitors on the power lines.

This implementation does not support MJPEG video stream format and there is no plans to support it in future. Video streaming is implemented with help of WebSocket API, please read documentation for more details.

To be discovered. The board is relatively stable so far.

• For programming you will need a suitable development environment. Possible options include Visual Studio Code, Arduino Studio or Espressif development environment .

It is pretty simple. You just need jumper wires, no soldering is really required. See the diagram below.

• Connect the RX line from the serial adapter to the TX pin on the AI-THINKER board
• The adapter's TX line goes to the ESP32 RX pin
• The GPIO0 pin of the AI-THINKER must be held LOW (to ground) when the unit is powered up to allow it to enter it's programming mode. This can be done with simple jumper cable connected at power on, fitting a switch for this is useful if you will be reprogramming a lot.
• You will need to supply 5V to the AI-THINKER in order to power it during programming; the FTDI board alone sometimes fails to supply this. The AI-THINKER CAM board is very sensitive to the quality of the power source. Decoupling capacitors are highly recommended.

This board is equipped with USB-C, so all you need is a USB-C port on your PC and a cable. It has the reset and programming push buttons already, so no breadboarding or external connections other than USB-C are required. In order to program, press both buttons simultaneously.

Download the latest release of the sketch from this repository. Once you have done that, you can open the sketch in the IDE by going to the esp32-cam-webserver sketch folder and selecting esp32-cam-webserver.ino. Compile it and upload it to your board.

You will need to copy the content of the data folder from this repository to the storage, which can be either a micro SD flash memory card or the built-in flash memory file system.

IMPORTANT! Without the storage and the content of the data folder on it, the sketch will not start.

You will need a blank SD card, which must be formatted as FAT32. Insert it into the micro SD slot of your computer and copy all the files from the data folder. The structure of files on the SD card should be like this:

After that, insert the card in the slot of your ESP32CAM board and restart it. The Server should start normally.

Please ensure the size of the card does not exceed 4GB, which is the maximum supported capacity for the ESP32-CAM board. Higher capacity SD cards may not work.

In order to use the internal ESP32 flash the file system needs to be defined in the platformio.ini:

[env:esp32cam]
...
board_build.filesystem = spiffs
build_flags = 
  ...
  -DARDUINO_SPIFFS
  ...

Re-build the sketch and the filesystem image and upload it to the ESP32CAM board.

Provided that everything goes well, you should be able to boot your ESP32 CAM Web Server from the built-in storage system.

If the system has not been configured yet, it will start in Access Point mode by default. The SSID of the access point will be esp32cam and the password is 123456789. If you have the Serial monitor connected to the ESP32CAM board, you should see the following messages:

No known networks found, entering AccessPoint fallback mode
Setting up Access Point (channel=1)
  SSID     : esp32cam
  Password : 123456789
IP address: 192.168.4.1
Access Point init successful
Starting Captive Portal
OTA is disabled
mDNS responder started
Added HTTP service to MDNS server
Connected

Connect to the access point and open the URL http://192.168.4.1/. The default username and password are admin/admin. You should see the following page:

Switch the Access Point Mode off. The screen will change as follows:

Specify the SSID and password for your WiFi setup. This board supports only the 2.4 GHz band, so you will need to ensure your WiFi router has this band enabled.

Set up your preferred NTP server, Time Zone, Daylight Saving Time (DST), desired host name, HTTP port. If you plan to use Over-the-Air firmware updates, please ensure you specify a complex password. Do not leave it empty or at the default.

Click Save and then Reboot. If everything is configured correctly, the ESP32CAM board will restart and connect to your WiFi automatically. The assigned IP address can be seen in the Serial Monitor logs.

Open the browser and navigate to http://<YOUR_IP_ADDRESS:YOUR_PORT>/ (for example, http://192.168.0.2:8080)

You should see the following screen:

.

Here you can take still images or start the video streaming from the camera installed on ESP32CAM.

The WiFi configuration page is available at the address http://<YOUR_IP_ADDRESS:YOUR_PORT>/setup.

The system monitoring page is accessible at http://<YOUR_IP_ADDRESS:YOUR_PORT>/dump:

.

The web server stores its configuration in JSON files. The format of the files is below. If any of these files is missing in the root folder of the storage used, default values will be loaded. Almost all parameters of the configuration files can be updated using the Web UI, so you don't have to update them manually in most cases.

The sample network config file is shown below. Please ensure you update it with parameters specific to your network. This file can be also updated via the Web UI.

{   
    "mdns_name":"YOUR_MDNS_NAME",
    "stations":[
        {"ssid": "YOUR_SSID", "pass":"YOUR_WIFI_PASSWORD"}
    ],
    "dhcp": true,
    "static_ip": {"ip":"192.168.0.2", "netmask":"255.255.255.0", "gateway":"192.168.0.1", 
                  "dns1":"192.168.0.1", "dns2":"8.8.8.8"},
    "http_port":80,
    "user":"admin",
    "pwd":"admin",
    "ota_enabled":true,
    "ota_password":"YOUR_OTA_PASSWORD",
    "accesspoint":false,
    "ap_ssid":"esp32cam",
    "ap_pass":"123456789",
    "ap_ip": {"ip":"192.168.4.1", "netmask":"255.255.255.0"},
    "ap_dhcp":true,
    "ntp_server":"pool.ntp.org",
    "gmt_offset":14400,
    "dst_offset":0
}

{
    "my_name": "MY_NAME",
    "max_streams":2,
    "mapping":[ {"uri":"/img", "path": "/www/img"},
                {"uri":"/css", "path": "/www/css"},
                {"uri":"/js", "path": "/www/js"}]
}

The parameter mapping allows to configure folders with static content for the web server.

{
    "framesize":8,
    "quality":12,
    "xclk":8,
    "frame_rate":12,
    "brightness":0,
    "contrast":0,
    "saturation":0,
    "special_effect":0,
    "wb_mode":0,"awb":1,
    "awb_gain":1,
    "aec":1,
    "aec2":0,
    "ae_level":0,
    "aec_value":204,
    "agc":1,
    "agc_gain":0,
    "gainceiling":0,
    "bpc":0,
    "wpc":1,
    "raw_gma":1,
    "lenc":1,
    "vflip":0,
    "hmirror":0,
    "dcw":1,
    "colorbar":0,
    "rotate":"0",
    "lamp":0,
    "autolamp":true,
    "flashlamp":100,
    "pwm": [{"pin":4, "frequency":50000, "resolution":9, "default":0}]
}

The parameter pwm allows to configure PWM out, which can be used in various applications (for example, to control PTZ camera servo motors)

{
    "username": "[email protected]",
    "password": "some_password",
    "smtp_server": "smtp.somewhere.com",
    "smtp_port": 465,
    "from_email": "From <[email protected]>",
    "to_email": "To <[email protected]>",
    "subject": "ESP32-CAM Alert",
    "message": "Snapshot taken at %TIME%",
    "html_message": "<h1>ESP32-CAM Alert</h1><p>Snapshot taken at %TIME%</p><img src=\"cid:photo.jpg\" />",
    "snaponstart": false,  
    "sleeponcomplete": false,
    "period": 0,
    "num_periods": 0,
    "start": "2026-02-01 15:00:00",
    "finish": "",
    "configured": false
}

This feature allows you to take still images on a schedule and mail them to a specified e-mail address.

In order to build and upload the ESP32-CAM WebServer to your board, it is best to use VS Code with the PlatformIO plugin. Just clone the source to your local drive, open the folder in VS Code, and PlatformIO will do all the magic for you.

If you need to access the video stream or take still images in a full screen mode (without the camera controls), the following URLs can be used:

• http://<your_ip:your_port>/view?mode=still - still image is displayed
• http://<your_ip:your_port>/view?mode=stream - video stream is displayed

The number of parallel video streams is limited to 2 (two) by default. If you need more parallel video streams supported, you can change the max_streams parameter in the httpd.json config file.

The communications between the web browser and the camera module can also be used to send commands directly to the camera (eg to automate it, etc) and form, in effect, an API for the camera.

• ESP32 Camera Web Server API.

This project is a deep refactoring and extension of the original work by Owen Carter (@easytarget).

The intent of refactoring was to simplify support and add additional features. This became possible due to excellent libraries, which are the foundation of many projects on the ESP platform nowadays:

• ESPAsyncWebServer
• AsyncTCP
• ArduinoJson
• ReadyMail