News Raspberry Pi Camera Module now available

Am I the only one thinking low cost homebrew GoPro?

 

Attach camera to Pi, install OpenCV, add LED illuminator ring, raise massive middle-finger to Vicon.
As soon as they get 720p60 and/or 640x480 120fps capture working, that is. 30fps is good for proof-of-concept, but that's going to give you a headache if you try and track at that rate. Hopefully the latency of capture is low enough for real-time work (though it doesn't look like you can feed raw unencoded sensor data via the video stream).

 

I want to use one as an IP security camera. Just chug it in a tupperware box and use some bathroom sealant along the edges.

 

A GoPro is £200. By the time you've bought a PI, the camera, a battery,wifi adaptor and a charger you don't have really that much left to hand fabricate a waterproof housing with a mounting kit and accessible controls.

More flexible? Maybe.

Cheaper? Not by much.

That's why GoPro became THE standard for extreme cams. Because they are so cheap!

 

Its a shame there is no Power over Ethernet version of the Pi.

 

While it's not 'proper' negotiated 802.3af PoE, quite a few people have bodged power supplies onto the unused ethernet pairs to power their pi's, e.g..

 

Well considering the Pi, Cam, Battery+Charger / Power & Wifi can all be picked up for around £100 so plenty left for a small custom housing.

So, more flexible? Definitely.

Cheaper? Clearly by a large margin at almost half the price.

 

As cool as it sounds, I don't think there'd be much of a comparison. The GoPro would be a hell of a lot lighter, smaller, resilient and I bet the image quality would be better.

Plus a second hand hero 2 is about £150.

 

Those PoE splitters are really good, I use one for powering and connecting my Draytek 120 to my Netgear UTM10. Saves me so much hassle what with the phone socket being in a stupid place.

Why bother when you can get a Horyzon HD? I intend to use one when I eventually get the funds together for a tricopter build.

 

And here I was thinking I'd come up with something worthwhile! eh!