RaspberryPi camera attachment in the works

by Alistair Lowe on 21 May 2012, 10:40

Tags: Raspberry Pi Foundation

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When the RaspberryPi was first released, whilst undoubtedly an excellent piece of kit for £25, this writer was stuck considering its potential applications beyond education, embedded graphics and media playback, favouring alternatives such as the BeagleBone for a system with easier to tap floating-point performance (Cortex-A8 vs ARM11) and an open design, supporting shield add-on modules.

However, the RaspberryPi Foundation has been hard at work and is looking to release a camera add-on module later this year, opening up some interesting opportunities for the board in the realms of automation and visual data acquisition. By using the Broadcom BCM2835, a chip design initially for use in devices such as camcorders, the RaspberryPi has had a high-speed CSI camera interface present, backed by powerful image processing capabilities, from day one.

The team has been teasing a 14-megapixel prototype, though states that the end product may be of a lower grade in order to keep costs down. Either way, there will now be one more reason to buy the RaspberryPi later on this year.

HEXUS Forums :: 6 Comments

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Posted by cheesemp - Mon 21 May 2012 10:55
Great news. RS let me put in an order on Friday. Looking forward to having a play!
Posted by 13thmonkey - Mon 21 May 2012 16:30
lowlight version would be nice, larger lower resolution sensor, could see what happens in my garden overnight
Posted by 3dcandy - Mon 21 May 2012 17:29
I think it's the low price of the Pi that has attracted people. Sure other systems are better, but if you're hacking or playing around it's better to have them cheaper…
Posted by TheAnimus - Mon 21 May 2012 21:10
13thmonkey
lowlight version would be nice, larger lower resolution sensor, could see what happens in my garden overnight
I'd say the whole point of this over say erm, a webcam, is that it will be mod happy, iirc without checking the broadcom chip only supports rolling shutter, so its not going to be that good anyway.

But anyway, on your topic, the senors in these cameras have no clue of colour, they have a filter on them for each pixels colour, normally just arranged RGB (some like olympus do this in odd shapes). They normally have UV and IR filters on them, hopefully you can remove these filters with little effort, and put one on that will filter all but IR. Some cheap LEDs or even a powerful lamp would be all you need.
Posted by miniyazz - Tue 22 May 2012 01:03
TheAnimus
I'd say the whole point of this over say erm, a webcam, is that it will be mod happy, iirc without checking the broadcom chip only supports rolling shutter, so its not going to be that good anyway.

But then most if not all DSLRs also use rolling shutter technology and yet have been used in major productions (think 5D MkII). Granted, on cheaper tech its problems may be more apparent but it's not necessarily going to produce poor quality video.

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