Adafruit
TTL Serial JPEG Camera with NTSC Video
This camera module can be a pretty neat project addition. It was designed to be used in security systems and does two main things - it outputs NTSC video ...
This camera module can be a pretty neat project addition. It was designed to be used in security systems and does two main things - it outputs NTSC video and can take snapshots of that video (in color) and transmit them over the TTL serial link. You can snap pictures at 640x480, 320x240 or 160x120 and they're pre-compressed JPEG images which makes them nice and small and easy to store on an SD card. Perfect for a data-logging, security, or photography project.
One nice thing about this particular camera is all the 'extras' that come with it. For example it has manually adjustable focus, auto-white-balance, auto-brightness and auto-contrast taken care of for you as well as motion detection built in! That means you can have it alert your project when something moved in the frame.
We also carry an enclosed weather-proof version
Using the module is pretty easy and only requires two digital pins (or a TTL serial port) - by default it transmits at 38400 baud. Of course we wouldn't just leave you with a datasheet and a 'good luck', we even spent a lot of time researching the module and DSP to make really nice libraries for both Arduino & CircuitPython, with example code that shows how to change the image size and compression quality, detect motion, control the video output stream, etc. That and more is available in our very detailed tutorial that will help get the most use out of your camera.
Example photo 1 (outside street) & example photo 2 (inside person)
Jargon buster
Plain-language definitions for the technical terms used above.
- Auto-white-balance
- A camera feature that adjusts colour so white objects look closer to white under different lighting. It matters because it reduces the amount of image processing your project needs to do, especially when lighting changes outdoors.
- baud
- Baud is the signalling rate of a serial connection, often used as the speed setting for UART communication. Matching the baud rate matters because both connected devices must use the same setting for readable data.
- CircuitPython
- A beginner-friendly version of Python designed to run directly on microcontroller boards. If a product supports CircuitPython, you can often program it by copying code files onto the board rather than setting up a more complex toolchain.
- JPEG
- A compressed image file format commonly used for photos. It matters because the camera sends already-compressed snapshots, which are easier to store on an SD card or transmit over a slow serial link than raw image data.
- Motion detection
- A camera feature that checks the image for changes that suggest something has moved. It matters because your project can use movement as a trigger instead of constantly saving or processing every frame.
- NTSC video
- An older analogue video signal standard used by many composite video screens and capture devices. It matters because this camera can provide a live video feed, but you need equipment that accepts NTSC composite video rather than HDMI or USB video.
- TTL serial
- A simple serial data connection that uses microcontroller logic-level signals rather than computer RS-232 voltage levels. It matters because the camera can connect directly to many microcontroller pins or a USB-to-TTL serial adapter, but not safely to an old-style RS-232 port without conversion.
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