[adolph]

You might get the most fun for your buck with an ESP32 Cam or EYE. ESP32 Cam boards go for about $7-9 on Amazon if you buy 2-3 at the same time. They don't have built-in USB, so you have to use an FTDI or other UART adapter to flash programs to it (at least the first time, you can set it up for OTA updates afterward). The more expensive ESPEYE has USB built in and a more powerful processor. The Seeed Studio ESP32 units also look interesting.

Here is a tutorial about how to use TinyML to perform image detection on the device: https://dronebotworkshop.com/esp32-object-detect/