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Raspberry Pi announces a new higher resolution Camera Module 3 with autofocus and HDR

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The Raspberry Pi Foundation has released a number of cameras over the years for its credit card-sized single-board computer, the Raspberry Pi (and it’s variants). The first iteration was a relatively mediocre 5-megapixels. The Pi Camera 2 brought this up to 8.1-megapixels. Now, the new Camera Module 3 bumps this up to a little more useful 11.9-megapixels. It’s also the first Raspberry Pi camera with phase detect autofocus.

Sure, it’s not the 60+ megapixels of high-end mirrorless cameras, but this is a Raspberry Pi we’re talking about. It’s not designed for shooting high-resolution landscapes and fine art photography. It’s largely for smaller-scale applications like basic live streaming, monitoring and AI. The increased resolution, though, along with the addition of autofocus, opens up more potential options.

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The “Pieca” is a Raspberry Pi powered camera with a Leica M lens mount

It feels like we’re having a big rush of Raspberry Pi based cameras recently. Lately, we’ve had the Paparazzo interchangeable C/CS mount camera, the accessible-anywhere Pi Cam, the Pi HQ Camera module-based Pikon, the instant animation printing Kinecam, and even seen a 65-year-old 8mm movie camera converted to digital completely non-destructively. Well now, it’s the turn of the Pieca.

This one’s pretty special. While most others have made use of the Raspberry Pi HQ Camera Module to provide it with a native C/CS mount, this one created by Tom Schucker at Tea and Tech Time comes with a Leica M mount. It still uses the Pi HQ camera module with the Raspberry Pi 4, but being Leica M mount, you can adapt pretty much any DSLR lens ever made to work with it.

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The KineCAM is a DIY instant camera that prints out animated kinegrams

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It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a kinegram. While the term “kinegram” wasn’t really coined until the late 1990s, the process has actually been around since the 1890s. I remember they seemed to be quite popular in some kids’ toys in the 1980s before the world started getting more digital and then they kind of disappeared for the most part.

But as with a lot of old tech returning to popular culture, it looks like the kinegram is back, too. PhD student Ticha Sethapakdi and her team at MIT produced an instant Kinegram camera, the KineCAM. It’s based on a Raspberry Pi, shoots multiple images in sequence and then prints out a single kinegram on thermal paper using its built-in printer. The KineCAM was also presented this year at SIGGRAPH 2022.

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The Pikon is a 3D printed interchangeable lens Raspberry Pi camera with a mirrorless camera form factor

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You know, it’s funny. I just want from saying how there are hardly any Pi 3 portable cameras out there that make use of the Pi High Quality Camera to offer interchangeable lenses and then a bunch pop up all at the same time. This one comes from Kevin McAleer, and it’s a bit like the Paparazzo, except in a much more convenient and useful form factor while still sporting a large touchscreen interface.

As it’s using the Pi HQ Camera module, it has a C-mount on the front to provide interchangeable lens options. You can even get C-mount adapters to let you use Nikon, Canon, M42 and other lenses on there, so you’re not just limited to C-mount lenses. It’s powered by a NanoWave 5000mAh USB battery pack and while the software still needs a little work, the hardware all comes together pretty well.

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Woman takes 50,000 photos and makes AI program to monitor cat’s poop

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What lengths would you go to for your pet? One woman went the extra mile (or twenty) to ensure her kitty was healthy by creating her own AI program to monitor her fur baby’s poop schedule. The software engineer spent almost 2 years on the project and estimates that she took around 50,000 photos for the machine to learn from.

The engineer who goes by the name Estefannie explained in a video exactly how she went about the operation. It involved several sensors, an infrared camera, a Raspberry Pi, and about 50,000 pictures of cat poop.

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The “Pi Cam” is a 12-megapixel, 3D printed, Raspberry Pi-powered camera you can control from anywhere

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I knew we’d see a smaller interchangeable lens Raspberry Pi-powered camera than the Paparazzo at some point. This one’s a little different, though. Instead of walking around and shooting pictures like a regular camera, this one requires a little external tech to access it. But you can access it from anywhere in the world, whether it be right next to you on your desk or literally on the opposite side of the planet – as long as it’s connected to the Internet.

Designed by Mukesh Sankhlaa, the Pi Cam is a “Remote Raspberry Pi Desktop/Camera/Server”. It’s sort of like an IP camera, except it runs Linux and opens up the door for all kinds of potential uses from simple remote access to automated features like timelapse. And all of the STL files and code are available for you to download. The build requires a handful of off-the-shelf components as well as some 3D-printed parts. But once you’ve got all the parts printed and gathered, assembly is pretty quick.

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The Paparazzo is a DIY interchangeable lens digital camera based off the Raspberry Pi and PI HQ Camera module

I knew we’d eventually start to see some custom “portable” cameras being made based off the Raspberry Pi HQ camera after they announced it in early 2020. Have to be honest, didn’t think it’d take this long but here we are. Created by Billy O’Sullivan, the Paparazzo C/CS is a 12-megapixel C/CS mount interchangeable lens camera based around exactly that camera module and the Raspberry Pi 4.

As mentioned, it offers a 12-megapixel resolution – because that’s the resolution of the Pi HQ camera – with all of the features you typically get with the Pi HQ camera on the Raspberry Pi 4, although it’s essentially just a point-and-shoot based on the software. It sports a big LCD on the back, with a menu-driven interface and minimal button layout.

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This 3D printed DIY teleprompter has a built-in screen and can be used anywhere

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Anybody who’s ever had to sit (or stand) and do a spoken piece to camera will know the struggle of trying to learn and memorise a script. Even if we think we’ve got it nailed down pretty well, we’ll often find ourselves doing two or three (or twelve) takes for some lines that just don’t seem to come out right, especially if they’re pretty long ones. This is where teleprompters step in and this one’s pretty awesome.

Designed by Modern Hobbyist (MH), this is the second iteration of his teleprompter design and features a built-in Raspberry Pi 3B+ and 3.5″ touchscreen so you don’t need to mess around trying to slot your phone into it each time you need it and thanks to running a Linux web server you get external button control thanks to an Arduino Pro Micro pretending to be a standard USB keyboard.

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Arducam announces new 108-megapixel USB camera module for IoT and Machine Vision application

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For those developing their own DIY cameras, the various modules that pop up on the market can be a lot of fun to experiment with. And one of the biggest names in camera modules for experimenting with is Arducam. Only a couple of months after releasing their 64-megapixel camera module for the Raspberry Pi, they’ve now announced a new 108-megapixel camera module and this one runs on USB 3.0.

The new 108-megapixel camera development kit is designed primarily for use with IoT and Machine Vision applications, hence the USB 3.0 connection, which provides a lot more versatility than being locked into a Raspberry Pi. So, you can use it on just about any system you can add a USB 3.0 port to – including your desktop computer!

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Take a ride on a model train set through a tiny Raspberry Pi FPV camera

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Developments in camera tech over the last decade have meant that we can put them in places that many of us previously thought impossible. One such person is Adam Honse, who built up a model railway with his dad back in the early 2000s and has wanted to stick a camera on it ever since. And now, thanks to the Raspberry Pi Zero and its tiny camera module, he can. So he did!

The view from the train’s camera is essentially like having an FPV camera mounted to the front of it, showing the train’s-eye-view of the model world through which it runs. If not for the occasional break in the illusion due to the background of the shot (and the lack of detail vs full size objects), it almost looks like it’s travelling through a real landscape.

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