from the I-can-see-for-miles-and-miles-and-..... dept.
Raspberry Pi launches camera with interchangeable lens system for $50:
Attention tinkerers: Raspberry Pi has released a new camera for its tiny single-board computers. The "Raspberry Pi High Quality Camera" is on sale now for $50, and it will be sold alongside the older Raspberry Pi Camera Module V2, which will still be the usual $25. This is a for-real camera system, so that $50 won't get you a ready-out-of-the-box Raspberry Pi camera, you'll also need to buy a lens for the—get this—interchangeable lens system that the high-quality camera supports.
Both cameras plug into the Raspberry Pi computer's camera serial interface using a ribbon cable, but the High Quality Camera looks like a massive upgrade, both in size and (hopefully) in image quality. While the $25 Camera Module V2 uses an ancient, low-end smartphone camera sensor with a microscopic lens, the High Quality Camera is a different class of product entirely. It's not a newer smartphone sensor, which is what I assumed when I first saw the news, but instead it's something that was originally intended for camcorders. It's a 12.3MP Sony IMX477 sensor with pretty huge 1.55 µm pixels and a 7.81 mm diagonal (1/2.3"-type). That's about double the sensor area of the Camera Module V2.
[...] The specs are in the same ballpark as a modern smartphone camera sensor, but the lenses for the High Quality Camera will blow your phone camera out of the water. There is an interchangeable lens system with support for off-the-shelf C- and CS-mount lenses and a back focus adjustment ring for swapping between lenses. This mount isn't as big as a DSLR lens—it's a smaller size that frequently gets used for 16mm CCTV video cameras. In addition to the native C-mount lenses out there, there are also plenty of adapters, and you can easily jump up to a real DSLR size like an EF Canon mount.
Would make for a nice camera rig on a telescope
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The Raspberry Pi Foundation has announced a new Raspberry Pi 4 model with 8 GB of RAM:
Now, the Raspberry Pi Foundation has upped the ante by releasing a Raspberry Pi 4 B with a generous 8GB of RAM. Launching today for $75, the Raspberry Pi 4 B (8GB) is identical to other Raspberry Pi 4 B models in every way, except for its RAM capacity. So what do you do with all that memory, and is spending $20 more than the price of the $55 4GB model worth it?
The short answer is that, right now, the 8GB capacity makes the most sense for users with very specialized needs: running data-intensive server loads or using virtual machines. As our tests show, it's pretty difficult to use more than 4GB of RAM on Raspberry Pi, even if you're a heavy multitasker.
A beta version of a 64-bit Raspbian OS, which is being renamed to "Raspberry Pi OS", is available. The existing 32-bit Raspbian can use all the RAM, but with a limit of up to 3 GB per process.
Some changes have been made to the board:
The back of the board adds silkscreen for certifications, as well as existing modifications for Raspberry Pi 4 Rev 1.2 to avoid damaging the board when inserting a MicroSD card. But the top of the board has more modification around the USB-C port, USB Type-A ports, and a chip between the VLI PCIe to USB chip and AV jack is just gone. So it's possible further USB-C issues have been fixed, and some improvements have been made to USB host ports maybe with regards to powering up external hard drives.
[Update from Eben Upton about hardware changes:
These are the regulator changes I mention in the post. The disappeared chip near the USB connector is the old regulator. The new stuff near the USB-C is the new regulator. The input clamp component has moved across to the USB area to make room.
Several iterations of the Raspberry Pi 4's firmware have reduced power consumption and heat. A beta-level firmware update from earlier in the week added USB boot support.
The latest version of Pi's mainstream camera module has autofocus, HDR and wide angle:
Raspberry Pi has released an updated camera, Camera Module 3 (aka Camera v3 or Camera Module v3), with an MSRP of $25 for standard or $35 for the wide angle version. The new module brings more pixels, rivalling the High Quality Camera's 12MP while keeping the smaller sensor-on-a-board form factor. What's new about this tiny camera is autofocus. This is the first official Raspberry Pi camera with autofocus, though Arducam's High Resolution camera delivered that functionality last year.
The Raspberry Pi camera was the first official accessory from Raspberry Pi, way back in 2013. The original 5MP model was updated to v2 in 2016 which brought 8MP to the game. Then the cameras got a bit more "serious" with the 12MP Raspberry Pi High Quality Camera in 2020; this version brought interchangeable lenses and a plethora of choices for the keen photographer, but it's pricey and doesn't come with a lens.
Fast forward to 2023 and we have a new mainstream Pi camera, the Raspberry Pi Camera v3 which updates the original camera's sensor-on-a-board form factor to pack a 12MP Sony IMX708 sensor and auto focus. It also comes in four flavors: standard, wide angle, NOIR and NOIR wide angle.
Specs, comparisons to legacy cameras and test results available at Tom's Hardware.
Previously:
- Arducam Reveals Hawk-Eye, a 64MP Raspberry Pi Camera
- Raspberry Pi Launches Camera With Interchangeable Lens System for $50
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Sunday May 03 2020, @11:00PM (5 children)
I would love to get one of those mounted on my telescope. I was given the telescope for my birthday, and have looked at the moon and managed to see some of the planets but lost interest a bit after that.
A camera setup that doesn't cost much would be cool.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 03 2020, @11:06PM (3 children)
I can see this for machine vision but what are the requirements for a telescope? Wouldn't a smaller sensor with larger photo-sites [apertus.org] make sense for depth of field and light sensitivity?
(Score: 4, Informative) by hubie on Sunday May 03 2020, @11:28PM (2 children)
It depends. It should be fine for bright objects, like the Moon and some of the planets. You are right that you really want sensitivity for this kind of thing if you want to do any serious stuff. But, there is a lot of really cool stuff you can do with some image processing. You can record image stacks and do image alignment and stacking, or lucky imaging [cam.ac.uk]. There is some nice software [duke.edu] out there that can produce some pretty impressive results.
Scott Manley did a neat video [youtube.com] where he pointed a hand-held DSLR at the space station to see what he could get, and just that was pretty impressive.
(Score: 4, Informative) by aim on Monday May 04 2020, @09:11AM (1 child)
That software list at Duke looks seriously outdated, and I don't even mean the look of it. Last revised this february? It sure doesn't look that way.
No DeepSkyStacker, siril, regim in that list. No Registax or AutoStakkert. No PIPP. There's ImageJ, but no AstroImageJ? Lots of FITS oriented stuff, but no Fitswork? And that's for free basic stuff. There's lots of payware, but no PixInsight? APP (Astro Pixel Processor)? Where are APT, N.I.N.A.? PHD2? What about plate solving?
(Score: 2) by hubie on Monday May 04 2020, @11:47AM
You are correct, and I meant that link to be more informative to the kinds of software that are out there rather than authoritative (it was one of the first Google hits I got).
However, thank you very much for mentioning AstroImageJ [louisville.edu]. I wasn't aware of that project. I use ImageJ [imagej.net] a lot and have been running it for many years, and I highly recommend it to anyone who plays with images for any reason.
(Score: 3, Informative) by hubie on Sunday May 03 2020, @11:17PM
You should certainly be able to mount this on your telescope. It sounds like they mounted their camera to a board with C-mount threads, which is a very common, almost universal, mount for small sensors like security cameras. There are plenty of ways to attach a c-mount to a telescope and it depends upon what your telescope back end is like. If you have telescope threads (i.e., T-mount), where you would unscrew the part that holds your eyepiece, you can get a T-mount-to-C-mount adapter. If you want to drop it instead into where the eyepiece goes, they have c-mount tubes that are 1.25-in diameter so that you mount the tube to your camera, and drop it in like an eyepiece.
Look around places like this [telescopeadapters.com]. I don't know anything about this particular site other than it was the first telescope parts place that came up with a Google search for me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 03 2020, @11:09PM (4 children)
They put a C-mount on their camera.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday May 03 2020, @11:23PM (3 children)
And the "C" stands for "creepshots." Also, voyeurism. Probably would work well in an area where showering women get complacent due to the large distance between houses and feel comfortable leaving the bathroom window wide open while drying off. Put it in a weatherproof enclosure with bluetooth and a battery and disguise the enclosure as a section of rain gutter or something.
On an unrelated note, I offer consulting services...
Consulting services for custom...wait for it..."Pi viewing!"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 04 2020, @12:24AM (1 child)
Mmmm... hair pi.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 04 2020, @07:34PM
Muff PI
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 04 2020, @06:20PM
Today I learned that "C" is for Voyeurism.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 04 2020, @01:59AM
Maybe one can adapt D-mount too and get a digital bolex for cheap, with some vignetting I guess. Those bolex lenses AFAIK are not very reusable on digital and it's a pity.
(Score: 2) by richtopia on Monday May 04 2020, @03:17PM
I don't know of another webcam that takes interchangeable lenses. I would like that functionality, but pulling out a KVM to drive the RPi would slow me down. If there was a USB variant I could use with my laptop I could use it everywhere.