Raspberry Pi Zero grows a camera connector | Hacker News Reader

Raspberry Pi Zero grows a camera connector

raspberrypi.org

108 pointsArtemis232 comments

With a camera connector, the Pi Zero is finally a full replacement for the A+ in all the projects that I've done/have in mind. Since it has full GPIO without a header, it's actually easier for me to wire things up in a more compact way for specific projects.

And since it's $5, I worry a lot less about sticking these things in areas where moisture, temperature, and potential-for-getting-snagged-by-a-kid are slight concerns.

For the immediate future, I hope to get one and use the adapter cable to stick in a small box with a camera for a plug-and-play time-lapse camera. Basically, add a knob that sets the interval on the side, then plug in a battery or plug into microSD, and it will start dropping pictures on the microSD card until it's powered off. Great for construction, dusty, or outdoor environments!

I'd be interested to see how well it works. I did something similar (a camera trap) with the model B and the problem I ran into is that the unit would often overheat and shut down if left in an enclosure in the sun. I didn't want to use active cooling, as the noise might scare away animals. I think the model A or a Zero would work better.

What were you running to grab the images? Where you processing with motion or something of the sort? Anything else running on the model B?

I ask because I have about one dozen Raspberry Pis (Model B, B+, and I think on of the latest one?) working as webcams. Yet I snap one photo per minute... and one 60 second video every 10-15 minutes. They rsync off-site.

And they're all running in a security camera housing, under the sun/rain/shine, in front of beaches, inside a ziplock bag.

Cunning and small, yet elusive like Bigfoot. I can't seem to find one at a reasonable cost.

On the blog he they stated production of the Pi Zeros had to be delayed to build up the Raspberry Pi 3's. Now that the initial surge of Raspberry Pi 3's is done, they stated they will build "thousands a day" until demand is met.

I'm not sure "thousands a day" will ever even clear the backlog of people waiting to get their first much less keep up with the latent demand of people who would buy a handful once they knew they could reliably get them for use in projects.

You can claim 1000's (as in 2) and still not even make 3/4 million per year.

Is the backlog really in the millions? That would be impressive.

Yeah, when they shipped first raspberrys the demand was in millions. Now because Zero is so small and cheap, everyone who needed pi for tinkering will order several zeros, including me. The only thing which prevented me from getting one was lack of camera connector.

Production has now increased following the release of rpi3. I got an email just today announcing stock at one of the suppliers.

Adafruit has already sold out again on RPiZero v1.3, as of the time of this comment.

In stock at the pihut as of the time of this comment.

But you can order only one.

I _like_ that Adafruit are selling the "bare Pi Zero" for $5, but the one per customer and ~$16 delivery means my project which wants a dozen of them is still not practical. If I could get 20 of them for $100+shipping I'd be all over that.

Until they catch up with demand, yes.

Where are you based?

Very happy to see the camera connector.

Anyone interested in the exact stock count figures? http://stockalert.alexellis.io/ along with full source-code and blog write-up on how it works.

We have a very small run project (tens) we plan to integrate the zero into, but have yet to be able to get our hands on one to even dev with, and are at the point where we are reconsidering the decision.

While it's nice to see improvements to the board, I'd love improvement in the supply chain.

It's still baffling to me that we give Raspberry Pi all this credit for making a $5 computer when there is nowhere you can actually exchange $5 for this $5 computer and it has remained that way since launch.

Being reliably in stock at the alleged price isn't a nice-to-have side benefit, it's the only thing there is when you claim to have vastly reduced the price of something.

Unless someone can point to a US distributor who actually has one of these things in stock for $5, color me unimpressed.

The stock situation is disappointing. They could've launched it a few dollars higher, and they'd still get the same demand with easier ramp-up.

Wow. So the camera is now 5x more expensive than the computer. Perhaps some day we'll get a less expensive camera.

Can you do some image-processing on the images captured from the camera, in realtime? For example: motion detection, or image enhancement or some filtering? I'm asking if the CPU is powerful enough to do a pass over the image in 30ms... or if not in 30ms, how long would edge-detection take on a Zero, on a full HD image?

Yes, you can. There are even tutorials for doing things like motion detection:

https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/turn-your-pi-into-a-low-cos...

However, for the really fancy stuff, you probably wanna look into programming for the VPU, which has some pretty decent muscle behind it.

The GPU is extremely powerful.

They're trying keep mfg in the UK and the unit price-volumes are too low (they're likely playing super conservative with their orders).

There are other elephants in the room as well...

Is that the third type of camera connector that the RPi designers have used already? Or is it the same one used on the compute module development boards?

I thought that they all ("all", excluding prototype hardware) used the same physical connector (a 15-pin ZIF connector). As far as data lanes and such, I'd assume that the Pi-Zero will take its cues from the non-compute-module Pi's and run 2 lanes of data on interface 1.

edit: Ah, OK. So it's a fine-pitch side-mount connector. I didn't realize that it actually uses different hardware.

So that means new Pi Zero batches will ship with the connector on the main board? (as opposed to connector-less earlier batches?)

Like a new version of the same hardware?

This update adds a camera connector. The GPIO header is still not populated on the board. This is actually great for those who plan on soldering different kinds of connectors (right angle, female, bottom-mounted, etc)

sold out everywhere

Check the site I posted. Can you order from the UK?

Your site is reporting a lot of units available but clicking thru to the vendors shows only bundle offers, not the device alone. It would be great if your site could distinguish between those.

All the single units go within the first day or few hours of the stock being available. The packaged sets pimoroni have are good value for money if you can use the additional pHATs. I've used the scroll/explorer/dac pHAT.

Someone raised a PR on my todo list to breakdown by category.. it would be more fragile - maybe done better through the Shopify API, negotiate an access key with the store etc etc.

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