World shutter sensors with no skew or distortion have been promised as the way forward for cameras for years now, however to date solely a handful of merchandise with that tech have made it to market. Now, Raspberry Pi is providing a 1.6-megapixel world shutter digicam module to hobbyists for $50, offering a platform for machine imaginative and prescient, hobbyist capturing and extra. 

The Raspberry Pi World Shutter Digital camera makes use of a 6.3mm Sony IMX296 sensor, and requires a Raspberry Pi board with a CSI digicam connector. Like different world shutter sensors, it really works by pairing every pixel with an analog storage ingredient, in order that mild indicators might be captured and saved by all pixels concurrently. 

By comparability, common CMOS sensors learn and retailer the sunshine captured by pixels from high to backside and left to proper. That may trigger diagonal skew on fast paced topics, or very bizarre distortion on rotating objects like propellers. The video under reveals the distinction with plucked guitar strings. 

By eliminating these points, the brand new digicam permits for distortion free seize of issues like sports activities or fast-moving industrial processes. The comparatively low decision is not an issue, the corporate says, as video is often downsampled earlier than being fed into machine imaginative and prescient techniques anyway. It makes use of the identical C/CS lens mount as Raspberry Pi’s 12-megapixel Excessive High quality Digital camera, so you possibly can connect 6mm CS‑mount and 16mm C-mount CGL lenses provided by way of the corporate’s reseller companions. 

In case you’re however frightened about delays, Raspberry Pi just lately posted that it has been engaged on resolving provide chain points. “We anticipate provide to recuperate to pre-pandemic ranges within the second quarter of 2023, and to be limitless within the second half of the 12 months,” it stated in a December weblog publish. The World Shutter Digital camera is now obtainable to buy for $50.