Raspberry Pi, the corporate that sells tiny, low cost, single-board computer systems, is releasing an add-on that’s going to open up a number of use instances — and sure, as a result of it’s 2024, there’s an AI angle. Referred to as the Raspberry Pi AI Digicam, this picture sensor comes with on-board AI processing and goes to value $70.
In additional technical phrases, the AI Digicam is predicated on a Sony picture sensor (the IMX500) paired with a RP2040, Raspberry Pi’s personal microcontroller chip with on-chip SRAM. Like the remainder of the line-up, the RP2040 follows Raspberry Pi’s total philosophy — it’s cheap but environment friendly.
In different phrases, AI startups aren’t going to switch their Nvidia GPUs with RP2040 chips for inference. However whenever you pair it with a picture sensor, you get an extension module that may seize photos and course of these photos by widespread neural community fashions.
As an additional benefit, on-board processing on the digital camera module implies that the host Raspberry Pi isn’t affected by visible knowledge processing. The Raspberry Pi stays free to carry out different operations — you don’t want so as to add a separate accelerator. The brand new module is appropriate with all Raspberry Pi computer systems.
This isn’t Raspberry Pi’s first digital camera module. The corporate nonetheless sells the Raspberry Pi Digicam Module 3, a easy 12-megapixel picture sensor from Sony (IMX708) mounted on a small add-on board which you could pair with a Raspberry Pi with a ribbon cable. As Raspberry Pi guarantees to maintain manufacturing working for a few years, the Digicam Module 3 will stay obtainable for round $25.
The AI Digicam is identical dimension because the Digicam Module 3 (25mm x 24mm) however barely thicker because of the construction of the optical sensor. It comes pre-loaded with the MobileNet-SSD mannequin, an object detection mannequin that may run in realtime.
At this level, you is likely to be questioning who’s going to make use of the Raspberry Pi AI Digicam. Whereas the tiny computer systems have been initially designed for tech hobbyists and homelab initiatives, Raspberry Pi now sells most of its units to corporations that use Raspberry Pi units in their very own merchandise or as half their meeting traces for inside industrial use instances.
When Raspberry Pi grew to become a public firm, it reported that the commercial and embedded phase represented 72% of its gross sales. That ratio is probably going going to be even increased for the AI Digicam.
I might think about corporations utilizing the AI Digicam module for sensible metropolis sensors that detect empty parking spots, say, or observe visitors flows. In an industrial atmosphere, the {hardware} could possibly be used for primary, automated high quality assurance with objects passing below the digital camera module.
The rationale why corporations like utilizing Raspberry Pi is as a result of they’ll produce computer systems and modules at scale — they confronted some post-Covid provide constraints however these appear to be resolved. Firms know they’ll reliability supply Raspberry Pi merchandise with out struggling delays in a manufacturing pipeline. That’s additionally a part of the explanation why Raspberry Pi guarantees that the AI Digicam will stay in manufacturing till a minimum of January 2028.
