My cat, Francois, sometimes goes missing for a few hours. I thought this mini spy camera would be the perfect thing to see where he goes! I purchased the module from Adafruit, very affordable, only $12.50. It is quite small, but very capable with it’s 480 pixel video and 1280 x 720 photos. There is a mini SD card reader built in and onboard LEDs that let you know if it’s working. In the learning pages Adafruit uses to accompany their products, I found the code and instructions I needed. I also used the portable version for the 3D printed casing.
3D printing the case was a piece of cake! I downloaded the files from thingiverse, used a raft, and no support was necessary. It took about 3 hours and $5 worth of silvery PLA filament! Since I physically modified the lid with snips, and cracked it in the process, I have to edit the file and reprint it, which I’ll include later!
The learning pages suggest you use their Adafruit Trinket minis and Adafruit Pro Trinket LiIon/LiPoly Backpack Add-Ons, which I purchased. Seeing as the trinket is just an ATtiny85 though, and I mill little PCBs for them to sit on, I decided to use my own ATtinys! I’ll use the trinket & backpack in another project eventually…
I’m also a digital embroidery enthusiast, so I thought it might be fun to stitch up an embroidered soft camera…
The end result was cute! Just not exactly what I needed. A fun distraction to the final end result. Making a cube out of stiff embroidered material is tough! I was planning to incorporate a button on the top, but after putting everything into the embroidered camera, I decided to just use the hard case like I had originally planned!
First I hot glued my little slide switch into the window, you can see very clearly where I snipped out some plastic. That’s glittery hot glue by the way.
There is a nice little giph on their learning page that was helpful in figuring out where the components should go. I don’t really understand the little slot for the SD card, as you can access the photo/videos from the port on the bottom of it via the USB cable that comes with the module. I suppose if your SD cards are small and need to switch them out? Since I knew I’d be recording a lot, I used a 32G mini SD card.
The teeny tiny 3.7 volt/110 mAh battery, I harvested from a broken toy quad copter! I just love how small and powerful it is! The lid snaps on perfectly! Now I just have to decide on how to mount it to my cat, collar or harness? I think a collar will be more discrete, but a harness would be more secure! I decided to go for a collar, but plan on purchasing a nice halter, as the camera swings too much when he’s walking.
This is our trip to the mail box!
