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The Room Explorer

Self-initiated project at Cerevo Inc, 08.2022

The Room Explorer is a radio-controlled car with camera livestream.
I had opportunity to write a technical blog article at Cerevo Inc. and this is the result of the article (the original in Japanese).

In Cerevo we have DIY toy car product called MKZ4, which can be controlled over WiFi from your smartphone. From the smartphone you only need to access the WiFi AP of the MKZ4, then connect to the MKZ4's web server from web browser. I thought it would be interesting if I can put camera to the car and livestream while controlling.
The controller of the MKZ4, ESP8266 is capable to act as simple HTTP server, yet its speed is not sufficient to stream camera data to the client (Smartphone). To stream camera pictures, I have used ESP32 camera module. I have also modified the MKZ4 code to accept control signal from ESP32 camera over UART. Technically it should be possible to completely control the toy car from ESP32, but because my module, M5CameraX module from M5, only had single grove port, I had to use MKZ4's controller (ESP8266) as a motor and servo controller.
To enable responsible control, Websocket was used for the communication between web browser and EP32 camera.

Material: MKZ4 kit, M5CameraX

The Room Explorer. White module in the front is the main controller with camera.