Raspberry Pi, the company known for selling affordable, compact single-board computers, has introduced a new add-on that expands its range of uses—and yes, in 2024, it naturally includes an AI element.
The new product, called the Raspberry Pi AI Camera, is an image sensor with onboard AI processing, priced at $70.
Technically speaking, the AI Camera is built around a Sony image sensor (the IMX500) combined with Raspberry Pi’s own microcontroller, the RP2040, which features on-chip SRAM.
As with other Raspberry Pi components, the RP2040 adheres to the company’s core philosophy: it is cost-effective yet efficient.
To clarify, AI startups won’t be swapping out their Nvidia GPUs for RP2040 chips to handle inference tasks.
However, when combined with an image sensor, the module offers the ability to capture images and process them using common neural network models.
One of the key advantages of the AI Camera is that its onboard processing means the host Raspberry Pi is not burdened with visual data processing.
This allows the Raspberry Pi to carry out other tasks without needing a separate accelerator. Moreover, the AI Camera is compatible with all Raspberry Pi computers.
This isn’t Raspberry Pi’s first foray into camera modules. The company continues to sell the Raspberry Pi Camera Module 3, which features a 12-megapixel Sony sensor (IMX708) mounted on a small add-on board, easily connected to a Raspberry Pi with a ribbon cable.
Raspberry Pi has committed to keeping the Camera Module 3 in production for many years, with its price remaining around $25.
The AI Camera, although the same size as the Camera Module 3 (25mm x 24mm), is slightly thicker due to the design of its optical sensor. It comes pre-installed with the MobileNet-SSD model, a real-time object detection model.
So, who will use the Raspberry Pi AI Camera? While the original Raspberry Pi computers were primarily intended for tech enthusiasts and home lab projects, the company now sells the majority of its devices to businesses that incorporate them into their products or use them for internal purposes in industrial settings.
When Raspberry Pi went public, it revealed that 72% of its sales were from the industrial and embedded segment, and this percentage is likely to be even higher for the AI Camera.
Possible applications for the AI Camera include smart city sensors, which could detect available parking spaces or monitor traffic flows.
In industrial environments, the hardware might be used for basic automated quality assurance, such as inspecting objects as they pass under the camera.
Companies prefer Raspberry Pi because of its ability to produce computers and modules at scale.
Though they experienced some supply chain issues following the Covid-19 pandemic, these appear to have been resolved.
Businesses rely on the consistent availability of Raspberry Pi products, knowing they can avoid production delays.
This reliability is why Raspberry Pi has guaranteed that the AI Camera will remain in production until at least January 2028.
