This weatherproof camera module is a classy upgrade to the basic camera module we already stock in the shop. The main differences is that this one comes in a nice metal case with a mounting hinge, a 1 meter long cable with the TTL & NTSC signals brought out, and it has an automatic IR LED system for night time photos. When the onboard photo-cell detects that it is too dark for the camera to take a photo, it turns on a ring of 12 IR LEDs that illuminate the nearby area for night-vision shots.

This camera was designed to be used in security systems and does two main things – it outputs NTSC video and can take snapshots of that video and transmit them over the TTL serial link. You can snap pictures at 640×480, 320×240 or 160×120 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.

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)

Technical Details

• Metal Housing size: 2″ x 2″ x 2.5″
• Weight: 150 grams
• Image sensor: CMOS 1/4 inch
• CMOS Pixels: 30M
• Pixel size: 5.6um*5.6um
• Output format: Standard JPEG/M-JPEG
• White balance: Automatic
• Exposure: Automatic
• Gain: Automatic
• Shutter: Electronic rolling shutter
• SNR: 45DB
• Dynamic Range: 60DB
• Max analog gain: 16DB
• Frame speed: 640*480 30fps
• Scan mode: Progressive scan
• Viewing angle: 60 degrees
• Monitoring distance: 10 meters, maximum 15meters (adjustable)
• Image size: VGA640*480), QVGA320*240), QQVGA160*120
• Baud rate: Default 38400, Maximum 115200
• Current draw: 75mA without IR LEDs on. 250mA extra for IR LEDs
• Operating voltage: DC +5V
• Communication: 3.3V TTL Three wire TX, RX, GND

Downloads:

• We have a fairly full-featured CircuitPython & Arduino library with examples that demonstrate how to use the camera
• The datasheet for the DSP processor itself (not terribly useful for the module but good for reference
• PTC-08 module datasheet contains dimensional drawings
• This is the DSP management tool (windows only sorry!) it allows you to tweak pretty much everything on the camera as well as test it out via a serial port
• A basic python sketch that will let you snag a image over a serial port – good for testing when you cant use the DSP tool above
• This is the ‘protocol cheat sheet’ for the sensor its a little crummy – we suggest reading our library code and porting it instead of trying to do it from scratch with this sheet
• Fabien’s Netduino + Camera tutorial