ESP32-CAM (AI-Thinker) Pinout

The ESP32-CAM pairs an ESP32 with an OV2640 camera and a microSD slot on one small board. It’s an extremely popular, extremely cheap way to add a camera to a project, and also one of the most commonly miswired boards, most of its GPIOs are already committed to the camera or SD card before you connect anything of your own.

No onboard USB, and how to flash it

This board has no onboard USB-to-serial converter. Unlike this site’s other ESP32 devkits, you need a separate external FTDI (or similar USB-to-serial) adapter wired to its UART pins to flash it or view serial output at all. Even with an adapter connected, you must also connect GPIO0 to GND before powering on or resetting the board to enter flashing mode, then disconnect it and reset again to run your uploaded firmware normally. Power it from a real 5V source, several guides note the board can behave unreliably on 3.3V despite the pin being labeled 3.3V-tolerant.

Camera pins (not available for other use)

These GPIOs are wired directly to the onboard OV2640 camera and are not available as general-purpose I/O:

The rest of the GPIOs

Genuinely free GPIOs, with the camera enabled and the SD card either disabled or in 1-bit mode: GPIO 2, 4, 12, 13, 14, 15 (GPIO4 only if you don’t need the onboard flash LED). That’s the entire realistic budget of free pins on this board, plan accordingly.

Conclusion

The ESP32-CAM is genuinely the cheapest way to add a camera to an ESP32 project, but budget your wiring around 2–6 free GPIOs, not the ESP32’s full pin count, and remember the external FTDI adapter, it isn’t optional. For a camera-equipped ESP32-S3 board with a display instead, see the T-Display-S3 (display, not camera) or Seeed’s XIAO ESP32S3 Sense (camera connector, no display).