Raspberry Pi, a company that sells small, inexpensive single-board computers, is releasing additional features that will open up several use cases. Yes. Because it’s 2024, there’s an AI aspect to it. Called the Raspberry Pi AI Camera, this image sensor features onboard AI processing and costs $70.
On a more technical note, the AI camera is based on a Sony image sensor (IMX500) combined with Raspberry Pi’s own microcontroller chip, the RP2040, with on-chip SRAM. Like the rest of the lineup, the RP2040 follows the overall philosophy of Raspberry Pi. In other words, it’s cheap and efficient.
That means AI startups won’t be replacing Nvidia GPUs with RP2040 chips for inference. However, when combined with an image sensor, you get an extension module that can capture images and process those images through typical neural network models.
As an added benefit, the camera module’s onboard processing means that the host Raspberry Pi is not affected by visual data processing. Raspberry Pi is free to perform other tasks, so there is no need to add a separate accelerator. The new module is compatible with all Raspberry Pi computers.
This is not the first camera module for Raspberry Pi. The company still sells the Raspberry Pi Camera Module 3, a simple 12-megapixel image sensor from Sony (IMX708) mounted on a small add-on board that can be paired with the Raspberry Pi using a ribbon cable. Raspberry Pi promises to continue production for many years, so Camera Module 3 will continue to sell for around $25.
The AI Camera is the same size as Camera Module 3 (25mm x 24mm), but is slightly thicker due to the structure of the optical sensor. It comes pre-loaded with the MobileNet-SSD model, an object detection model that can be run in real time.
At this point, you might be wondering who will use the Raspberry Pi AI camera. These tiny computers were originally designed for tech enthusiasts and home lab projects, but Raspberry Pi now sells most of its devices to companies that use Raspberry Pi devices in their own products or as part of an assembly line for internal industrial use cases.
When Raspberry Pi became a public company, it reported that its industrial and embedded segment accounted for 72% of its revenue. For AI cameras, that percentage is likely to be even higher.
You can imagine companies using AI camera modules in smart city sensors that detect empty parking spaces or track traffic flow. In an industrial environment, the hardware can be used for basic, automated quality assurance of objects passing under the camera module.
The reason companies prefer Raspberry Pi is because computers and modules can be produced on a large scale. We faced supply constraints after COVID-19, but the problem seems to have been resolved. Companies know they can reliably source Raspberry Pi products without experiencing delays in their production pipeline. This is also one of the reasons why Raspberry Pi has promised that its AI camera will continue production until at least January 2028.
