Beer and Sausages weren't the only thing on the menu during my trip to the Electronica show in Munich Germany last week. I also served up another large slice of Raspberry Pi, wowing visitors with the crystal clear video and other cool things you can do with this low cost pocket sized Linux computer. This time however we were lucky to host the world’s first public demonstration of the Raspberry Pi video camera. The camera module is a 5 megapixel camera phone sensor that plugs into the Raspberry Pi via the onboard camera connector interface. Using CSI for data and I2C for control, the camera module will allow users to record 1080p at 30 frames per second in H264 video format.
Thanks again to Rob Bishop (above) of the Raspberry Pi Foundation for helping us set this up. To demo the camera we attached the "Pi-Cam" to a make shift boom arm and then streamed HD video of people playing our Raspberry Pi Batak Game, which challenged contestants to get the fastest time to win a Raspberry Pi bundle. The game was very popular and at times extremely competitive!
The Raspberry Pi camera should be available soon, hopefully not long into the New Year. We believe it will be priced around the same as a Raspberry Pi, and will be on sale at RS Components. The camera will allow users to very cheaply add an HD video input to their projects for anything from robotics to home security systems.
Here's a quick one take video of me showing the camera in action on the stand.