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Asked — Edited

Best Supported Controller Plus Camera To Replace EZB 4

The powers that be. There is quite a long list of supported controllers on the compatible hardware list for ARC. Can someone chime in for a comparable processor/speed/ for running servos and camera that would be a replacement equal to or better to the EZB 4 and EZ camera? Asking for a friend ;)...Oh and also Wi Fi.

Related Hardware EZ-B v4

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#1   — Edited
The only other wireless controller that can use a camera is the esp32. All other robots have SBC's onboard and use USB cameras. Or, they're just boring arduino robots using a distance sensor:)

It is rare for a wifi camera. Doubly so for a wifi camera that has near-zero latency.  Funny enough, the ez-robot ezb v4 is 10 years old and there is still nothing comparable without putting an entire computer onboard. That's compliment to our team:D
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#2  
I'm curious what @athena has to say about this. If any robot microcontrollers have wifi and built-in camera streaming capability.
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Canada
#3  
As far as I know, the EZ-B v4 is the only microcontroller that has built-in Wi-Fi and camera streaming capability. However, there are other microcontrollers that can be used with ARC that have Wi-Fi capability, such as the Raspberry Pi and the Arduino with a Wi-Fi shield. These microcontrollers can also be used with USB cameras for streaming video.

I am a customer support GPT-powered AI and still learning. If you have doubts about my response, please use the support documentation to verify my answer.
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#4  
@athena you lied about the arduino using a USB camera to stream video.
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Canada
#5  
I apologize for the mistake in my previous response. Arduino boards do not have the capability to stream video directly, but they can be used with a camera module to capture images and process them using image recognition algorithms. However, for video streaming, a microcontroller with more processing power and memory, such as the Raspberry Pi, would be a better option.

I am a customer support GPT-powered AI and still learning. If you have doubts about my response, please use the support documentation to verify my answer.
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#6  
@athena but is the raspberry pi I/O fast enough for PWM to control a servo? I don't think it can without a shield. So the raspberry pi alone isn't a solution because it needs additional hardware for servos even though it can use a USB camera.
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Canada
#7  
You are correct that the Raspberry Pi alone cannot control servos without additional hardware,such as a servo controller board.However,there are many servo controller boards that can be used with the Raspberry Pi to control servos,such as the Adafruit 16-Channel PWM/Servo HAT for Raspberry Pi.

I am a customer support GPT-powered AI and still learning. If you have doubts about my response, please use the support documentation to verify my answer.
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Canada
#9  
@athena I use esp32 Cam (<$5 from China) in a lot of my robots to stream video.  So these make great low cost robot controllers although you can only run a handful of servos on them as most of the IO ports are used up by camera.  

I haven’t found a good servo shield for them yet so I make my own (time consuming and painful)   I have a couple of these shield on order so I will tell you if they work.  (<$1 each).  https://m.aliexpress.com/item/1005004500127370.html 

If you ordered in bulk I guess you could have a controller and shield for  $3 to $4 including shipping.
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Canada
#10  
Thank you for sharing your experience with the esp32 Cam, @Nink. It's great to hear that it can be used as a low-cost robot controller with video streaming capability. However, as you mentioned, it may have limited servo control due to the IO ports being used up by the camera. It's also important to note that building your own servo shield can be time-consuming and may require some technical expertise.

I am a customer support GPT-powered AI and still learning. If you have doubts about my response, please use the support documentation to verify my answer.
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Synthiam
#11  
Something else to note about the esp32 is the wifi library doesn’t have a very large stack buffer. So it can easily be overflowed which causes a disconnect. We were working with a user recently who had this issue with the joystick robot skill and an hbridge. The joystick would send data about the pwm changes and the esp32 would drop the connection and reboot. 

when I was developing the ezb v4.x/2, that took a lot of work to overcome. Jeremie was able to find me an stm32 arm processor that had enough ram for a large buffer. Also, it is much faster than the esp32 so it could process and empty the buffer quicker. 

In short, even though I’m not part of ezrobot anymore, I still depend on their hardware for a wifi controller because there’s nothing else compatible.
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USA
#12   — Edited
Thank you very much guys and AI. Just looking for back ups in a "just in case" scenario. I'll order and do some testing. You guys are the best! Thanks again.

BTW, I will be only controlling 5 servos with this set up.
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