The Raspberry Pi Foundation was to have put out an add-on camera module for its cheap mini-computer in the year 2012, however this did not come to pass. Now, according to industry sources, the company is planning on launching the module later in 2013. It is possible that the release could take place sometime after a month, as no concrete release date has been fixed as yet.
The new board with the camera attached is said to measure 20 x 25 x 10 mm and does not weigh much. With the camera on board, the chip would now be advantageous for a variety of household appliances, as well as robotics. Devices that would be able to handle the chip with the camera are already in their developmental stages .
In 2012, there was a prototype of the module that was demoed by the company. This prototype could record 1080-p H.264 video at 30 frames per second with its on-board 5-megapixel camera. The foundation said on its blog on February 6, 2013, that although the picture quality of the final version of the hardware was good, they wanted to spend some more time on it to make it ‘marvelous’.
Once this final tuning is complete and relevant drivers have been released, its possible that the scientific world could slowly turn the page and explore the next chapter of tech evolution, where machines would be able to ‘see’ for themselves.
