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ESP32 - I'm using FT232RL USB to serial adapter to connect esp32-cam board. The USB to serial adapter connects directly to the USB port of my laptop. There is no need for USB data cable.

The esp32-cam board is connected to FT232RL using four female-female jumper wires, and one jumper wire to connect GPIO0 to GND during erasing and firmware flashing of the esp32-cam.

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The pins are connected like this:
esp32-cam       FT232RL
GND                    GND
3V3                      3V3  *
UDR                     TXD
UDT                     RXD
IO0  to GND (erase/flash)
* By the way, it's OK to use 5V power on esp32.

Remember, to erase and upload firmware to the flash memory, you need to connect GPIO0 to GND.

Push reset button or pull out/push in FT232RL before each erasing and uploading operation.

In order to make use of OV2640 camera attached to the esp32-cam, you will need micropython firmware that supports camera module.
You might need to build these from the source. I have tried two versions of micropython port,  1.10 and 1.11  which I cloned from GitHub and compiled locally.

It's needed some doing to manage the process of building these micropython ports. I'm willing to upload to my GitHub repository the two firmware.bin files should there be anyone interested.

That's it for today.


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