ESP32 – Improved ESP32-CAM Guide

I was hoping that the CTS or DTR pins on the FTDI could somehow be used. The ESP32-CAM will not be powered from the FTDI. It will be powered from an Adafruit 1000c booster, which has an enable pin

Indeed, this is possible.

You can use either the DTR or RTS pin to drive GPIOO, which is available as CSI MCLK on pin 6 of the same header 8 where you find the serial signals.

And you can use the other signal for the enable to your power supply.

esp-tool is python to begin with, and seems to manipulate these signals, so you could merely modify the code.

Or, if you want to continue to use them in the usual way, you could build a little adapter board to put between the FTDI and the ESP32-CAM, with the open collector transistor inverters as seen on the more common ESP dev boards with the CP210x interface.

But there is no need to modify the ESP32-CAM board itself.