I’m chuffed to bits to say that an official Raspberry Pi camera module dropped through my letterbox today. This is a unit that the Foundation is kindly allowing me to beta test in advance of it becoming generally available to buy. I’ve run a few experiments on it so far and even though the software is very much beta, I can see so much potential there. Here are some pics of the unboxing. Cue Fanfare! Please note, this is temporary packaging.
Here’s a pic of the S5 port you plug it into and another showing the ribbon cable – note that the metallic pin part of the ribbon cable faces away from the ethernet port. The last pic is showing the Pi inside an SB components case with the ribbon cable coming nicely out of the provided slot.
And here’s… well, a picture of me taken with the camera. Not a pretty sight
!
My next job is to write a web interface in PHP to call all the different options you can give to the camera. This could be interesting as I’m still a beginner with PHP. It would take about 30 mins with ColdFusion!
[…] I'm chuffed to bits to say that an official Raspberry Pi camera module dropped through my letterbox today. I've run a few experiments on it so far and even though the software is very much beta, I … […]
[…] recantha I’m chuffed to bits to say that an official Raspberry Pi camera module dropped through my […]
I didn’t know it was available yet! Looking at Farnell, I cannot find it on the website. How did you order it?
I’m one of the beta testers – they sent me one after I suggested a good idea for one (Astronomy camera). I think tricorder project helped too 🙂
What is Astronomy camera?
Sorry, should’ve been clearer. I put forward the suggestion of using the camera for low-light photography to take pictures of the night sky and, in particular, the moon.
Congratulations you jammy git. You’ve stopped my run. I got first production vid of Gertboard and model A, and the elusive camera has slipped my grasp… unless
Having said that though, you’ve got Beta, so that’s different really.
Ironically I happen to know one person with two, another person with one and now you as well. It seems like everyone has one except me. Waaaaaaaaaaaaa. I want my mummy.
Looks like I’ll be abroad when it launches too. Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa. 🙁
Awww nuts 🙁
Yeah, I know, I got a bit lucky, there.
Not a bad little camera, actually, though the ribbon cable keeps *pinging* it all over the place. Might need a mount of some kind!
I’ll try and do some kind of demo video with it tomorrow if you’d like it for Raspi.tv?
That would be cool Mike 🙂 Do you mean video of it or video through it?
Which would you prefer, Alex?
A bit of both would be ideal, but if only one, you could kill two birds with one stone by getting it to video itself in a mirror. No idea how hard it will be, so whatever you can do. Would be nice to both see it and see some output from it.
The camera is the next thing going into BerryIO 🙂
I can let you have the syntax if it helps you get a headstart, Daniel?
I’d rather have the camera 😉
If it helps, I can tell you that the ribbon cable is quite flexible, but feels a bit delicate so you’ll have to be careful with it when embedding it in the camera. Takes good photos though, I have to say. Video is… interesting… Trying to get it into a meaningful mp4 container is my next challenge 🙂
You can play back H264 video using omxplayer. BUT, I’m having problems with framerate – OMXplayer doesn’t allow you to specify it so if you use a non-25fps framerate on redord (2fps is fun) , you get incorrect speed playback. Use avconv (was ffmpeg) to add a container around the H264 (although I’ve managed to add the container, for some reason I’ve not been able to set the fps correctly).
What I’m trying to do is get it to record a video, convert it into something that can be viewed over the web and then play it through a web-page. I reckon it’s just a question of getting the wrapper right and streaming it somehow. Great fun 🙂 I must remember… 25 fps NOT 24 fps…
Great! I love berryio!
As part of your testing, ccould you please test it with the Motion Daemon, maybe OPenCV at some point. My project uses 6 web cams for Robotics 360 view and object Idenfification. I am currently using $5.00 generic web cams from a discount store and they work very well, better than my logitech expensive camera.
I will _try_ to. I’m somewhat restricted to just using the provided software at the moment and that may not provide the hooks needed to use either of those packages.
Use the -d option on the command line and the software will cycle through all the camera options (that make a difference) – no need for PHP just to demo it. Note not all options work (the software allows access to all POSSIBLE options, not necessarily all options AVAILABLE) – I’m writing some documentation at the moment which should help.
I saw another Blog that you are running a LEMP set-up. My only hope is that any software that comes with the camera allows us to output image file records to MySQLdb and has some form of motion detection.As I surf various Pi Forums, these seem to be key to lots of peoples projects atm.
Putting the images into MySQL is probably already possible – just a question of serialising the binary file. With motion detection, I do know that they’re looking for someone to work on it, so they’ve obviously got that in mind.
It looks like the camera module attaches to the camera PCB with a tiny (5 mm long?) pale yellow flex cable, and then the camera PCB attaches to the R-Pi with a larger white flex cable. Is the black camera module free to pivot up off the camera PCB on its tiny flex cable, or is it soldered or otherwise firmly affixed to the PCB ?
It is _currently_ free to move, although this does make it a bit fragile. I’ve put some blu-tack between the lens and the board to make it more stable. I understand from email correspondence with members of the Raspberry Pi Foundation that the boards for sale will have the lens part glued to the board.
Thanks for the quick reply! I am looking forward to seeing some more examples of images from this camera. Especially nice would be a full-resolution version of something (anything) in broad daylight- so far I saw an early pre-dawn shot which is nice, but I suspect not the best the camera can do.
Your wish is my command 😉
New blog post just published with link to full-sized image