Review: ESP-EYE – Face Recognition on a Shoestring

When Espressif introduced the ESP32 it became an instant hit in the maker world. The new ESP-EYE board is their latest development board for image recognition and audio processing in AIoT applications.

Often the easiest way to get acquainted with new technology such as IoT hardware and software is to apply it in a practical way to build something useful; that way learning gets to be fun. In this project the author builds a remotely controlled model for his grandchildren; they get lots of fun out of using the finished product and also helped him build the boat. It uses some empty drinks bottles, a couple of old PC fans and some small controller boards such as the ESP8266 to handle the control functions, set up a Wi-Fi network and even provide an MQTT broker service!

Sometimes an NTP server on your own local network can come in very handy. As well as situations where your network is cut off from the Internet but various pieces of software need a time reference, there are also cases where you are developing a project that requires the ability to fetch time data over the Internet, but you would ideally like to create custom NTP data. As the following guide shows, achieving all this and more is (relatively) easy.

Artificial intelligence, facial recognition and voice recognition… how do you begin to unpick these rather specialized techniques? Everyone’s heard of them, and even uses them without realizing it. From there to implementing them yourself is another step. Only a small step thanks to ESP-EYE, an artificial intelligence module designed by Espressif for the IoT! Even for your personal projects.

Espressif has announced a new microcontroller, the ESP32-S2. It is a powerful WiFi-enabled chip with support for USB-OTG.

The M5Stack base module contains an ESP32 board along with a 320 x 240 pixels graphics-capable colour display all packaged in a cute case. I was curious to see how quickly I could build a small network application with it ...

A tutorial explaining how to get started with the ESP32.

More than 30 years after the accident that destroyed the nuclear powerplant in Chernobyl (Ukraine), the radiation it created still has measurable consequences in regions hundreds of kilometres away. This project came to life when Sweden launched a nationwide project in 2018 to analyse dried mushrooms to determine the accumulated radiation level in the soil.

The ESP32 is a very powerful controller, equally at home in entry-level and professional projects. Dogan Ibrahim takes this into account in his book "The Complete ESP32 Projects Guide". We delved a little deeper into his book.

The quality of the air we breathe should be of deep concern to all of us. We all know that airborne dust particles keep asthma sufferers awake at night, but the levels of certain gasses are equally important. This project measures the level of air contaminant gasses, and sounds an alarm when their concentration exceeds a certain level, for instance when someone lights a cigarette…