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Has anyone built a truly low-power camera IoT device on an off-the-shelf SoM?

inxnik

I’m trying to achieve Amazon Ring–level battery life — several months on a 5000 mAh battery — using non-custom SoMs. The device should stay almost at zero power between photo sessions.

So far, all tested platforms (ESP32-S3, ESP32-P4, AmebaPro2 RTL8735BDM, Luckfox RV1103) show deep-sleep consumption ≥ 70 mA, far above the advertised values, making them unsuitable.

We also tested a two-chip architecture (small MCU like ATtiny85 waking the main SoM), but the main issue is boot-to-first-photo time. It must be <1 second, which is hard with Linux-based SoMs — yet only Linux SoMs support proper MIPI sensors like IMX219/IMX708.

Questions:

– Has anyone achieved a low-power camera system (photo only) on an existing SoM, with real deep sleep or fast wake-up?

– Is designing a custom board around a SoC the only realistic solution?

– Or can something like Radxa CM3 + a highly optimized Linux stack (Buildroot, custom suspend modes) reach <1 s wake and low idle power?

– Has anyone successfully built a battery-powered MIPI-camera device with either deep sleep or a two-chip wake architecture?

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    I'm surprised at the levels you see for ESP32.
    Are you sure you disabled all peripherals and used deep sleep?

    Here is what I do:

        esp_sleep_enable_ext0_wakeup(GPIO_NUM_9, 0);
        epd_poweroff_all();

        esp_deep_sleep_start();  // Sleep until we have received a GPIO interrupt

    The epd_poweroff_all() call disables entirely the epaper display that I'm using. Without it, I don't reach the sub mA consumption. Are you sure you did not leave the camera powered on?

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  • 0

    I'm surprised at the levels you see for ESP32.
    Are you sure you disabled all peripherals and used deep sleep?

    Here is what I do:

        esp_sleep_enable_ext0_wakeup(GPIO_NUM_9, 0);
        epd_poweroff_all();

        esp_deep_sleep_start();  // Sleep until we have received a GPIO interrupt

    The epd_poweroff_all() call disables entirely the epaper display that I'm using. Without it, I don't reach the sub mA consumption. Are you sure you did not leave the camera powered on?

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