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I am using an esp32-cam to stream video. As it is steaming I want to take a picture and save it to a micro SD card when motion is detected.

Hardware: ESP8266-12e, ESP32-CAM,
EKMC2604112K panasonic PIR motion sensor

I am powering the 12e and PIR with a 3.3v regulator with a 10uf smoothing cap.
I am getting the signal from the PIR on pin 13 (INPUT)on the 12e. I have a 10k ohm pull down resistor on this pin.
When pin 13 goes HIGH it sends a signal to an MQTT server to send a notification of the movement. Also when pin 13 goes HIGH it triggers Pin 5 (OUTPUT) on the 12e to go HIGH. When I do a multimeter reading of Pin 5 it reads 3.3v.

I am powering the ESP32 with a 6v regulator with 10uf smoothing cap. which outputs about 5.7v. I connect Pin 5 of the 12e to Pin 13 (INPUT) of the esp32. When Pin 5 goes high it should activate Pin 13 which then tells the camera to take a picture and save it to the MicroSD card.

When I power the whole thing up, if I don't have Pin 13 of esp32 connected, the camera streams and takes a picture about every 2 seconds and saves it to the microSD card.
If I then connect Pin 5 (12e OUTPUT) to Pin 13 (esp32 INPUT) when there is movement detected on the PIR the flash on the ESP32 lights up slightly about 500msec apart but when I check no pictures are saved to the MicroSD card.

If I power the whole thing up and I have Pin 5 connected to Pin 13 the MicroSD card is activated but there is no flash of any kind when there is movement and no pictures are taken.

I have tried an pull down resister of 10k and 20k ohms but there is no change in the outcome.

If I power the ESP32 with a FTDI 5v source with Pin 5 to Pin 13 picture is taken every 500msec. connecting to pull down pin doesn't do anything and disconnecting the pins doesn't have an effect either.

I have attached a drawing of the connections.

connections drawing

I hope this helps. I am at my wits end as what to do. If anyone can help me I would greatly appreciate it.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ what is the actual problem? ... your description is somewhat unuclear ... do pictures get saved sometimes, and not saved at other times? \$\endgroup\$
    – jsotola
    May 11, 2021 at 22:15
  • \$\begingroup\$ When Pin 13 on ESP32-CAM is not connected to anything camera takes pictures about every 500msec and saved to the MicroSD card. However if Pin 13 on ESP32-CAM is connected to Pin 5 on ESP8266-12e no pictures are saved, even though there is a 3.3v signal sent when motion is detected. There are slight flashes of light on camera flash on motion but no pictures are taken or saved. \$\endgroup\$
    – user1114881
    May 11, 2021 at 23:27
  • \$\begingroup\$ What is the reason you're using an ESP8266-12E for what the ESP32-Cam should easily be able to handle itself? Are you using customized code or one of the ESP32-Cam examples? \$\endgroup\$
    – StarCat
    May 12, 2021 at 7:22

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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So I changed the INPUT Pin on the ESP32 from 13 to 16 and put a 33ohm pull down resistor on it and now it works great. Apparently Pin 16 is better for INPUT than Pin 13. Thanks for looking at my post.

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    \$\begingroup\$ Why a 33 Ohm pull down? \$\endgroup\$
    – StarCat
    May 12, 2021 at 7:23

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