XIAO ESP32S3 camera web apps — AP (hotspot) mode
The board becomes its own WiFi hotspot. Clients join the board's SSID and the
page is ALWAYS at
http://192.168.4.1. No router, no internet needed.
Best for classrooms: one board per student/team, isolated networks.
Read the
skill (same repo) first for base workflow and pitfalls
(especially: PSRAM flag mandatory, DTR reset-stuck recovery, no serial reads
while a demo must keep running).
Step 1 — ALWAYS ask the user first
Never invent credentials. Ask the user for:
- AP 이름(SSID) — e.g. . For classroom fleets suggest numbered
names (..).
- AP 비밀번호 — 8+ chars (WPA2 minimum). If the user wants an open AP,
confirm explicitly.
- 채널 (optional, default 1) — for MULTIPLE boards in one room, spread
across 1 / 6 / 11 (board N → channel ); 20 boards all on
channel 1 will jam each other.
- Which app: collector, inference viewer, or both.
Step 2 — generate the sketch from the template
Templates in
are verified working code — do not rewrite them:
assets/web_collect.ino.tpl
- — live inference viewer (needs the
Edge Impulse library installed in the sketchbook)
Copy the template to
<workspace>\<NN>_<name>\<NN>_<name>.ino
(folder = ino
name), then replace the placeholders literally:
| Placeholder | Meaning | Example |
|---|
| hotspot name | |
| hotspot password (8+ chars) | |
| WiFi channel (bare number, no quotes) | |
| inference app only — Edge Impulse project name, matching the installed library folder | |
Step 3 — compile, upload
powershell
arduino-cli compile --fqbn esp32:esp32:XIAO_ESP32S3 --board-options PSRAM=opi <SKETCH_DIR>
arduino-cli upload -p COM4 --fqbn esp32:esp32:XIAO_ESP32S3 --board-options PSRAM=opi <SKETCH_DIR>
is mandatory (camera + model need PSRAM). The inference build
needs
if the Edge Impulse library was just swapped.
Step 4 — verify
powershell
# the AP should appear in a WiFi scan within ~15 s of flashing
netsh wlan show networks | Select-String "<AP_SSID>"
(netsh caches scans — retry after 20 s before concluding failure.)
This check needs a WiFi adapter on the PC, and many desktops do not have
one. If
netsh wlan show interfaces
reports that the Wireless AutoConfig
service is not running, or
lists only Ethernet, no amount of
retrying will show the AP — the machine physically cannot scan. Do not read
that as a failed flash. Fall back to serial (below), or have the user check
from their phone.
Watching the board over serial
In AP mode the PC usually cannot reach the board at all, so serial is often
the
only verification available to you. Use the
skill.
powershell
mon # interactive, port auto-detected
.\scripts\mon.ps1 -Seconds 15 # bounded, for your own debugging
Expected on success:
AP started. Open http://192.168.4.1
Collector ready
instead means the sketch halts before ever starting the
AP — the board is a plain XIAO ESP32S3 without the Sense camera module, or the
module is not seated. Scanning for the SSID forever will never reveal this;
one serial read does.
Two things worth knowing rather than avoiding:
- Opening the port resets the board via DTR, so the log restarts from boot.
That is what you want here — these lines only print once at startup.
- If a board ends up stuck showing only the ROM banner afterwards
(pitfall 8 of ), re-running clears it,
and leaves the sketch running for the demo.
When the user wants to watch it themselves, hand them the command rather than
launching the interactive monitor from a tool call — it never returns. In
Claude Code the
prefix runs it in their session:
Full check: connect a device to the AP and open
http://192.168.4.1 —
tell the user connecting from THEIR phone/PC will drop that device's
internet while connected; that is expected in AP mode.
Notes
- Collector page: captures go to an in-browser gallery (label badges, per-shot
delete, "전체 ZIP 다운로드" produces files ready for Edge
Impulse). Refreshing the page clears the gallery — download the ZIP first.
- Inference page: whole-frame colored box + top label + per-class confidence
bars (classification model — per-object location boxes need a FOMO model).
- The camera renders rotated 90°; the inference template already compensates
(CW feature rotation, verified empirically).