The PI Zero Wifi does have a camera port, but the pinout for the ribbon cable is different (and physically smaller) than that of a standard pi. You may need a conversion cable to get it working with a module like this.
Dunno why but the first idea I got from this is to attach RaspPi + this camera to a telescope, and build remote controlled DIY telescope that you can put in your back yard.
Could be good as a dash cam. I am sure with the endless addons you could build in accelerometer, audio and physical button triggers. All open source and stored how you like.
The sensor on this is smaller than even a good guidescope camera and has on quarter the pixel size, not to mention that unless this is a full spectrum sensor you won’t see a whole lot.
Regardless of what the press release says, this is not intended to take amazing pictures. And for video it seems to cap out at 1080p for some reason. Unfortunate because the sensor does have the resolution for UHD.
What it should allow is to build custom photo traps to better study animal behaviour in the wild or at least make that cheaper.
Its also 1/3rd the price of the cheapest 1.3mp astro camera you can pick up easily.
You’re not wrong, if you were going astro only spend 3x as much for a cheap 1mp camera with much better light gathering than this one. But for a small multi purpose maker camera module its seems pretty decent. And whats not good about putting together your own astro rpi contraption.
The missing H-alpha for starters. But even without that, combined with the pi itself you are over 100,- bucks. That’s not that far off a used APS-C camera.
It seems to be a big improvement for computer vision. That’s cool.
It’s not a great photographic tool. Regardless of price.
Which also still needs a computer (which could be a rpi).
Lots of astrophotographers out there using plain old DSLRs
I completely agree wit you btw, but thats never stopped people using any old camera to take pictures of the sky, you can get some pretty good shots.
Oh, and i think it could be an excellent little camera for things like this, anything that needs some sort of image capture for data processing but doesnt need detailed images to do so.
For sure. There are compact cameras with old sensors that are almost as good as astro converted stuff. And milky way pictures can be done on almost anything with a lens around f/2,8 or faster.
A camera does not need a computer to take pictures. You need one to edit those pictures but then we are not talking about a pi anymore. Most cameras have a timelapse feature built-in. Even older ones.
Oh I was talking actual astro camera which are almost always only the camera its self, they need to be attached to a computer (like this one does, although via USB instead of this rpi connector) to actually control the camera and capture images.
Fair enough. At that point this rpi camera module is probably a bit … well, cheap compared to the stuff around it but sure, you could.
For wide angle photos of the night sky you don’t actually need a brain to keep the camera aligned. Devices like the Vixen Polarie can keep a small DSLR or mirrorless relatively well on course when set up properly.
Anyway, better vision for cheap means better aim for terminators. … yaaay?
does the zero wifi have a camera port?
