Hi Jason. Thomas requested I discuss with you an idea I DM'd him a couple of days ago. It has to do with the attack on our rendezvous during last week's demonstration.

I have two MDU development boards with a built-in 2 megapixel camera that can connect to wifi or bluetooth for applications such as surveillance.

https://www.arducam.com/esp32-machine-vision-learning-guide/

Depending on resolution settings, they can stream 45+ fps. But most relevantly, they utilize facial recognition machine learning.

They cost $10 or less retail, are just over 1 inch squared in size, and can use micro SD cards for storage as high as 64GB based on some testimonies I've seen.

They do, however, require a pretty hefty power source to supply 5V @ ~200mA, so I don't think a cell phone battery bank would work. However, power supply would be by no means prohibitive.

Is the suggestion to put them inside the vehicles?

That is a possibility.

More guys staying with the vehicles seems like a better solution, the antifa were wearing masks anyway

or trail cams near the road to get plates of any antifa vehicles that come

It's not so much they'd be able to recognize the perpetrators.

Failing to recognize a face could be used to program an alert system.

Yes, placing these kinds of things as surveillance sentries is another option.

Multiple devices can connect to the same wifi/BT network and their video streams viewed from the same web browser.

I don't know off the top of my head of especially useful surveillance applications for this device, I just wanted to mention to Thomas something I already know how to work with and is very versatile.

Might be worth bringing them to next demo, not sure what the application would be at this time though

The cameras would not prevent future vandalism, the only solution imo is more people watching the vehicles

What's convenient is that I can program them on site for whatever purpose.

Cameras never directly prevented anything.

But using them as advanced alert systems can.

I can being the arduino, esp32-cams, the wires/cables, etc. without taking up much space at all.

If anyone has an arduino IDE already installed on their PC, that makes things even easier.

Might as well bring them