I'm new to this forum and I'm reaching out because I'm stuck and there's hardly any information on this topic available in the Internet.
I am currently building a video doorbell (no cloud – no privacy issues!) based on an ESP32-CAM (Ai-Thinker). This camera will send a stream to Homeassistant/MotionEye 24/7, which is recorded under certain conditions (and deleted afterwords due to privacy laws).
What I have been able to find out so far:
- Normal ESP camera modules have an IR filter and cannot film at night with IR LED support.
- NightVision modules do not have an IR filter and produce false colors and generally poor image quality during the day – they are designed for recording with IR light.
- Commercial cameras mechanically push an IR filter into the lens during the day and remove it at night ("IRCUT").
GPT mentions it would be better to use a NightVision module and try to filter out at least the color and contrast problems.
What do you think?
Now I was about to order such a module and currently find a lot of OV3660s on offer at AliExpress. These have real advantages over the standard OV2640: Since they encode JPEG in the camera module itself using the image quality set via MotionEye, much less data flows through the ESP. This means you can achieve a higher resolution and a higher frame rate (at least according to GPT...).
But I can't find any OV3660s with night vision anywhere on the internet.
Does anyone know anything about this issue and can help me?