$25 Raspberry Pi camera module shipping this April

Raspberry Pi has announced that its cheap camera module will become available in April for $25, and, to mark the occasion, it is giving away 10 free pre-production units.

Raspberry Pi, the maker of the $35 and $25 computers, has recently announced that it would release a $25 camera module “soon”. The project is nearing its completion as the camera modules have finally entered into production, giving the engineers enough time to refine the software.

Raspberry Pi to release the $25 camera module in April. The foundation is also giving away 10 pre-production boards to “creative” people.

Raspberry Pi opens “pre-production camera board” contest

The company confirmed that the camera boards are going to become available for sale in April 2013 for the aforementioned price of $25. However, Raspberry Pi has 10 pre-production units to give away to creative photographers and developers.

The contest is seeking people with creative minds, said Community Manager Liz Upton. The 10 pre-production boards work just fine, though they are not running the final software. This is why Raspberry Pi has decided to give away the boards, while it continues to tweak the software.

Director of Engineering Gordon Hollingworth is in charge of the contest and he is waiting for your emails at [email protected] until March 12.

Liz Upton revealed a few ideas that may give photographers, developers, engineers or whoever will participate a better chance at winning the competition. The idea list includes facial recognition, combining two cameras together to capture 3D photos, and writing a software to allow the camera to “know” when an object, that should not be there, gets into the frame.

On a side note, Upton confirmed that another unit will be sent to Dave Akerman, who recently sent a TARDIS into space with the help of a Raspberry Pi-powered weather balloon.

$25 camera module can capture 5MP images

The Raspberry Pi camera module project started with a 14-megapixel image sensor, but the foundation scrapped the plans because of the costs. Nowadays, the final version consists of a 5-megapixel sensor, codenamed OV5647, and supplied by OmniVision.

The “device” itself measures 8 x 8 x 4mm and it can be attached to Raspberry Pi computers using a special ribbon cable.

Pi’s image sensor can capture 2592 x 1944 resolution photos and can record full HD 1080p videos.