I want to connect five OV2640 cameras via FPC to an ESP32 on a custom PCB. Is this generally possible and does the ESP32 have enough power for this or do I need an ESP32 for each camera? The frames per second are not so important as the cameras will be used as QR code scanners. Which components allow to run so many cameras with one ESP32?
Depends on your programming abilities. You can set up a “1-Wire” bus and put the lot on that. You could have one microcontroller as master and the rest as slaves - your external USB connection would go to the master and it could, in theory at least, then pass on program upgrades to the others. Clearly they would all have to be programmed individually, originally. But, quite frankly, the investment in time and effort on setting all that up? If you had dozens, hundreds - then yes. But you only have a small hand full. I’d just bring out their USB connections and program them individually, via those. I think each one has a unique identifier, stored in ROM - so they could all run the same software and include that identifier in messages on the bus.