ESP32-Lepton

High-performance ESP-IDF driver for FLIR Lepton 3.5 thermal imaging cameras.

Table of Contents

• ESP32-Lepton
  • Table of Contents
  • Features
  • Hardware Support
  • Requirements
  • Installation
    • Using ESP-IDF Component Manager
    • Manual Installation
  • Kconfig Options
  • Color Palettes (TBD)
  • Performance
  • Examples
  • License
  • Maintainer

Features

• Full support for Lepton 3.5 (160x120 resolution)
• VoSPI (Video over SPI) high-speed frame capture
• CCI (Command & Control Interface) via I2C
• AGC (Automatic Gain Control) support
• FFC (Flat Field Correction) control
• Radiometry support (temperature measurement)
• Multiple color palettes (Iron, Rainbow, Grayscale)

Hardware Support

Camera Model	Resolution	Status
Lepton 3.0	160x120	⚠️ Not tested
Lepton 3.5	160x120	✅ Tested
Lepton 2.x	80x60	⚠️ Not tested

Tested ESP32 Platforms:

• ESP32-S3 (Recommended)
• ESP32 (Should work, not extensively tested)

Requirements

• ESP-IDF: v5.1 or newer
• Hardware:
  • ESP32 or ESP32-S3 module
  • FLIR Lepton 3.x camera module
  • SPI interface (3-wire or 4-wire)
  • I2C interface for CCI
  • Adequate power supply (≥150mA @ 3.3V for Lepton)

Installation

Using ESP-IDF Component Manager

Add to your main/idf_component.yml:

dependencies:
  esp32-lepton:
    git: https://github.com/Kampi/ESP32-Lepton.git

Manual Installation

• Clone into your project's components directory:

cd your_project/components
git clone https://github.com/Kampi/ESP32-Lepton.git

Kconfig Options

Configure via idf.py menuconfig:

Component config → ESP32-Lepton

Color Palettes (TBD)

Built-in palettes for thermal visualization:

Palette	Description	Use Case
Iron	Black → Red → Yellow → White	General thermal imaging

Performance

Typical Frame Rates:

• Lepton 3.5: ~8.6 Hz (native)
• ESP32-S3 @ 240 MHz: ~9 Hz capture + RGB conversion

Examples

See the examples/ directory:

• basic_init: Basic initialization of the Lepton camera
• basic_capture: Basic capture example

License

This project is licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0.

See LICENSE for full text.

Maintainer

Daniel Kampert
📧 [email protected]
🌐 www.kampis-elektroecke.de

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Contributions Welcome! Please open issues or pull requests on GitHub.