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Raspberry Pi, famous for its affordable single-board computers, announced a new AI camera today (Sept. 30).
The company ventured out into artificial intelligence earlier this year with the arrival of its AI kit in June.
“The AI Kit is an awesomely powerful piece of hardware, capable of performing thirteen trillion operations per second,” writes Naush Patuck on the company’s blog. “But it is only compatible with Raspberry Pi 5, and requires a separate camera module to capture visual data.”
That’s where the AI camera comes in.
🚨 NEW PRODUCT ALERT 🚨
The Raspberry Pi AI Camera, built around Sony’s IMX500 image sensor with integrated AI accelerator, enables you to create impressive vision AI applications.
It's compatible with all Raspberry Pi models.
On sale now for $70.https://t.co/gArKdyp8ox pic.twitter.com/5Sy9QUFVxR
— Raspberry Pi (@Raspberry_Pi) September 30, 2024
AI camera specs and uses
The camera is based around a 12 megapixel Sony IMX500 image sensor and has an AI accelerator integrated in. It has two sensor modes: 4056×3040 at 10 frames per second and 2028×1520 at 30 frames per second.
It’s the same size as Raspberry Pi’s non-AI camera offering, the Camera Module 3 at just 25 x 24mm. The camera comes equipped with manual focus and a 78-degree field of view.
The camera is managed by a RP2040 microcontroller chip, meaning that the host Raspberry Pi won’t be bogged down with the visual processing. It’s left free for any other operations.
Sony’s AI tools will be at users’ disposal and it can also be connected to all Raspberry Pis via camera ribbon cables.
It comes loaded with MobileNet-SSD, object detection software that runs in real time.
While Raspberry Pis have proved popular with amateurs and schools throughout the years, around 72 per cent of their sales are industrial now. The camera is expected to be even more popular with this market.
“We’ve been inspired by the incredible AI projects you’ve built over the years with Raspberry Pi, and your hard work and inventiveness encourages us to invest in the tools that will help you go further,” the blog post concludes.
“The arrival of first the AI Kit, and now the AI Camera, opens up a whole new world of opportunities for high-resolution, high-frame rate, high-quality visual AI: we don’t know what you’re going to build with them, but we’re sure it will be awesome.”
Raspberry Pi’s new camera is available to pre-order now. It retails for just $70 and is expected to ship mid-October.
Feature image credit: Raspberry Pi
