A camera for less than 10 EUR

Today I got my ESP32-CAM to work. My goal is to have cheap camera surveillance all over the house, even in cellar to read my gas counter :) The camera costs less than 10 EUR, I got it from https://de.aliexpress.com/item/32983165020.html?spm=a2g0o.order_list.order_list_main.5.26655c5fja4s5J&gatewayAdapt=glo2deu

Here is the beautiful thing:



I connected it to the 5V and GND GPIO PINS of my Raspberry Pi:

connecting pin 1 and 3 of the RasPi to 1 and 2 on the ESP



Then I looked on my desktop's internet settings and found a new open WLAN:



(note: with other models I have also seen the name ESP_1065BD)

I connected to the camera's WLAN. It showed a question mark as there was no connection to the internet (just to the webcam):



Then, on my desktop, I looked what IP address I had in the camera's WLAN:

thorsten@tweedleburg:~$ ifconfig
enp2s0: flags=4099<UP,BROADCAST,MULTICAST>  mtu 1500
        ether 8c:ec:4b:26:a9:31  txqueuelen 1000  (Ethernet)
        RX packets 0  bytes 0 (0.0 B)
        RX errors 0  dropped 0  overruns 0  frame 0
        TX packets 0  bytes 0 (0.0 B)
        TX errors 0  dropped 0 overruns 0  carrier 0  collisions 0

enxa4ae1226d2fc: flags=4099<UP,BROADCAST,MULTICAST>  mtu 1500
        ether a4:ae:12:26:d2:fc  txqueuelen 1000  (Ethernet)
        RX packets 0  bytes 0 (0.0 B)
        RX errors 0  dropped 0  overruns 0  frame 0
        TX packets 0  bytes 0 (0.0 B)
        TX errors 0  dropped 0 overruns 0  carrier 0  collisions 0

lo: flags=73<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING>  mtu 65536
        inet 127.0.0.1  netmask 255.0.0.0
        inet6 ::1  prefixlen 128  scopeid 0x10<host>
        loop  txqueuelen 1000  (Local Loopback)
        RX packets 5421  bytes 489702 (489.7 KB)
        RX errors 0  dropped 0  overruns 0  frame 0
        TX packets 5421  bytes 489702 (489.7 KB)
        TX errors 0  dropped 0 overruns 0  carrier 0  collisions 0

wlp3s0: flags=4163<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST>  mtu 1500
        inet 192.168.4.2  netmask 255.255.255.0  broadcast 192.168.4.255
        inet6 fe80::21c6:3309:3990:e4a6  prefixlen 64  scopeid 0x20<link>
        ether 9c:30:5b:6e:7a:9f  txqueuelen 1000  (Ethernet)
        RX packets 87832  bytes 88394875 (88.3 MB)
        RX errors 0  dropped 2354  overruns 0  frame 0
        TX packets 36095  bytes 7258828 (7.2 MB)
        TX errors 0  dropped 0 overruns 0  carrier 0  collisions 0

thorsten@tweedleburg:~$ ping 192.168.4.2
PING 192.168.4.2 (192.168.4.2) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 192.168.4.2: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.061 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.4.2: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.073 ms

Aha, my desktop got the IP address 192.168.4.2 via DHCP. Cool. Now the command nmap showed me that there were only two IP addresses in this WLAN:

thorsten@tweedleburg:~$ nmap 192.168.4.0/24
Starting Nmap 7.80 ( https://nmap.org ) at 2023-01-29 20:55 CET
Nmap scan report for 192.168.4.1
Host is up (0.027s latency).
Not shown: 998 closed ports
PORT   STATE SERVICE
80/tcp open  http
81/tcp open  hosts2-ns

Nmap scan report for 192.168.4.2
Host is up (0.00013s latency).
All 1000 scanned ports on 192.168.4.2 are closed

Nmap done: 256 IP addresses (2 hosts up) scanned in 6.16 seconds

Only two IP addresses, 192.168.4.1 and 192.168.4.2. And 192.168.4.2 was my desktop's IP address, so 192.168.4.1 must be my camera's IP address. And indeed, surfing to http://192.168.4.1 I got this screen:




So the camera is already in full action and broadcasting via WLAN. An unsecure WLAN btw.



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