[HN Gopher] Arducam Pi Hawk-eye is a 64MP camera for Raspberry P...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Arducam Pi Hawk-eye is a 64MP camera for Raspberry Pi 4/CM4
        
       Author : zdw
       Score  : 40 points
       Date   : 2022-04-06 18:01 UTC (5 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.cnx-software.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.cnx-software.com)
        
       | nyadesu wrote:
       | >"Future Raspberry Pi board may be able to take advantage of the
       | higher video resolution and framerate enabled by the new camera
       | module."
       | 
       | This is interesting, the community it's been asking for more
       | powerful Raspberry Pi models, with more PCI lanes too. Models
       | like that would be amazing for building NAS, routers and IoT
       | devices
        
         | SxC97 wrote:
         | I've always wanted to run a small pi box as a router with
         | pfsense. Right now my only other option for a small all in one,
         | low power pfsense box is maybe an Intel NUC?
        
           | walrus01 wrote:
           | For pfsense you'd really do a lot better with a small x86-64
           | system (mini-itx motherboard) that has four or more gigabit
           | ethernet ports with Intel chipset onboard, attached to PCI-E
           | 3.0 bus. In a small mini-itx case it would definitely be a
           | lot bigger than a raspberry pi but also a great deal more
           | capable.
           | 
           | Depending on your needs you can also get systems that have
           | several 10GbE SFP+ cages on-motherboard.
        
             | kube-system wrote:
             | If you search "mini firewall appliance" or "pfsense router"
             | on your favorite marketplaces you'll get results for some
             | custom intel hardware that has all of everything you need
             | in a package smaller than mITX.
        
               | walrus01 wrote:
               | yes, the usual industrial/embedded motherboard
               | manufacturers build such things, some are NUC sized.
        
           | kube-system wrote:
           | Your biggest hurdle there is that pfsense requires x86-64
        
           | digitallyfree wrote:
           | If you're looking for something cheaper than a Pi try finding
           | used thin clients, which are basically x86 industrial PCs.
           | With a managed switch behind it you can use seperate VLANs so
           | that you can run pfsense with both WAN and LAN on a single
           | NIC. Obviously this will cause reduced speed on the WAN-LAN
           | interface due to the single shared NIC, but if you're looking
           | at a Pi anyways the networking performance of the thin client
           | may be adequate for your needs.
        
       | DaveExeter wrote:
       | >Sensor - Sensor with 9152 x 6944 pixels resolution
       | 
       | Well, that clears that up!
        
         | milleramp wrote:
         | It's very close to a Sony IMX686, which would be really nice.
        
       | atum47 wrote:
       | Nice, I'm right now working on a raspberry pi camera solution to
       | create a timelapse of something I'm building that will take about
       | 6 months. I have the original camera module (raspberry pi camera
       | rev 1.3) but I'd love to try this 64mb one out someday.
        
       | dekhn wrote:
       | really wish they had put a C-mount for lenses on it. Also, every
       | single raspberry pi CSI connector or camera I have (in the tens
       | now) has broken under light handling.
        
         | michaelt wrote:
         | Eh, C-mount means sacrificing autofocus.
         | 
         | IME many applications get a big performance benefit from
         | autofocus - in both home and industrial applications.
        
           | dekhn wrote:
           | I want to use this in a situation where I can control the
           | focal distance (microscope). In principle you could even make
           | an autofocus system with a zoom lens and a servo although the
           | engineering is definitely non-trivial.
           | 
           | Is there a standard mount (other than DSLRs) that supports
           | autofocus?
        
       | michaelt wrote:
       | Does anyone have any idea why this camera is limited to 1080p30
       | when playing video?
       | 
       | After all, 1080p30 is only 0.5Gbps, and with the CM4's 4 MIPI
       | lanes at 1Gbps each, there's enough input bandwidth for 4k 60fps.
        
         | hatsunearu wrote:
         | >1080p30 is only 0.5Gbps
         | 
         | You sure about that? It should be 1920 * 1080 * 3 subpixels * 8
         | bits * 30 fps = just under 1.5Gbps
         | 
         | I assume they use chroma subsampling to make it work
        
           | michaelt wrote:
           | Yeah, I'm pretty sure.
           | 
           | The sensor will have a Bayer pattern [1] and the data will go
           | across the bus in Bayer format. The processor will then
           | perform debayering. So no need to multiply by 3 channels per
           | pixel :)
           | 
           | While many image sensors _will_ perform debayering for you if
           | you want, doing so means you need 3x the bandwidth for not
           | much benefit, so very few people do it.
           | 
           | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayer_filter
        
             | jandrese wrote:
             | So you are working in monochrome? Even after you have
             | applied the Bayer filter you still need 24 bits per pixel
             | do you not?
        
               | michaelt wrote:
               | No - go check out that Wikipedia link about Bayer
               | filters.
               | 
               | For the vast majority of cameras, if you buy a "4
               | megapixel" image sensor, you get 1 million red pixels, 2
               | million green pixels, and 1 million blue pixels.
               | 
               | When you load the image into your image editor and see 3
               | colours per pixel, 2 of the 3 are interpolated from
               | neighbouring pixels.
        
       | beembeem wrote:
       | I'm hoping this will meet expectations for a home security
       | camera. Too bad none of their sample photos have a face in it.
        
         | uuyi wrote:
         | You'd want good low light performance there which means a
         | smaller number of larger pixels.
        
           | throwaway894345 wrote:
           | Noob question: why can't you aggregate 4 pixel values to
           | emulate a single, 4x-larger pixel?
        
             | uuyi wrote:
             | Well you still end up with less sensor surface area with 4x
             | as many pixels on the same substrate because there's a gap
             | around each cell and the micro lenses are smaller. So you
             | can aggregate them but you're still getting less light.
             | 
             | There's a happy medium somewhere on density vs performance.
             | I think the iPhone 13 pro seems to have it about right for
             | "reasonable compromise"
        
               | [deleted]
        
       | MisterTea wrote:
       | > Turning your Raspberry Pi into a DSLR-like camera.
       | 
       | This is stretching the truth. From the sample images the low
       | image quality is what I expected from a cheap tiny sensor and
       | lens. Zooming in just gives you noise instead of detail. It's
       | like the cheap "4k" IP CCTV cameras I have at home that aren't
       | much sharper looking than HD 1920x1080 cameras I had.
       | 
       | Though perhaps hacks like sensor cooling to reduce noise and
       | replacing the cheap optics with quality could improve quality.
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | ruined wrote:
       | the 4-camera kit is interesting. seems like a decent way to
       | capture high resolution depth images using offset
        
         | zimpenfish wrote:
         | Wonder if you can combine it with the multi-flash technique for
         | better results?
         | 
         | https://web.media.mit.edu/~raskar/NprCamera/
        
         | aberoham wrote:
         | "(almost)"
        
         | m4x wrote:
         | And multispectral images
        
       | mwambua wrote:
       | At what point do you start seeing diminishing return on pixel-
       | count with such a small sensor? (Or can you always get value if
       | you're willing to bump up your exposure time)
        
         | zimpenfish wrote:
         | I guess if you don't mind reducing the resolution, you can e.g.
         | average 4 pixels to reduce the noise (but I don't know if that
         | gives you a lower noise floor than just a 16MP sensor in the
         | first place...)
        
           | tomtom1337 wrote:
           | You would actually have more noise, or at least, not less
           | noise. There is readout noise associated with reading the
           | information out from each pixel. Using one bigger pixel would
           | give you less noise than four smaller ones :)
        
         | colechristensen wrote:
         | This camera does indeed have too many pixels.
         | 
         | If you use the Rayleigh criterion to calculate the maximum
         | angular resolution based on aperture (th = 1.22 * l / d) using
         | green light for the wavelength (and focal length / focal ratio
         | to get the aperture) and use the resulting angular resolution
         | and the given diagonal 84 degree field of view... you end up
         | getting that there are about half as many pixels as the maximum
         | theoretical angular resolution. Combined with lens
         | imperfections and other sources of distortion (as opposed to
         | the other commenters talking about exposure times) the result
         | is that the extra pixels are really probably not adding any new
         | information, or that they're right at the levels of diminishing
         | returns where the returns are more or less zero for extra
         | pixels.
         | 
         | >can you always get value if you're willing to bump up your
         | exposure time
         | 
         | No, there are hard limits on how much extra information you can
         | get with more exposure time.
        
           | rich_sasha wrote:
           | What about pixel size compared to light wavelength?
           | 
           | If my maths is right, 7.4mm sensor side divided by 9,150
           | pixels is about 800nm size. Visible light is 400-700nm. And
           | presumably not all of the pixel is actually light-sensitive.
           | 
           | Is this a valid comparison though? I'm not good at quantum...
        
             | tomtom1337 wrote:
             | The Rayleigh criterion above is exactly what is used to
             | answer the question you're asking :) it tells you what size
             | objects you can resolve with a given wavelength of light,
             | which if you think about it in a different manner also
             | tells you what the smallest useful pixel size you can have
             | is. Two smaller pixels next to one another would be able to
             | distinguish no more information than a combined one.
        
         | uuyi wrote:
         | It's mostly a problem of pixel size. The smaller the pixels the
         | less light the pixels get. That means really terrible low light
         | performance. And no software can't magically make that as good
         | as a pixel 4x the size.
         | 
         | The only advantage here is it allows you to get away with more
         | crime like cropping and digital zoom in brighter lights. That
         | may be an advantage depending on the application.
         | 
         | I'd rather have a 12MP sensor twice that size with some glass
         | in front though for most applications. Far more useful.
        
           | tonyarkles wrote:
           | > with some glass in front though
           | 
           | Since it sounds like you're familiar with the field, any
           | chance you've come across a CS- or C-mount lens with an
           | autofocus motor? I've looked around a bunch and haven't had
           | much luck. The current solution is a full C-mount-to-Canon-
           | EF-mount adapter that has drive electronics in it, but it's
           | eye-wateringly expensive and huge & heavy.
        
             | neetdeth wrote:
             | Never had a reason to use them, but I do recall that Edmund
             | Optics has some C-mount units with liquid lenses in their
             | catalog. The driver modules will allow control over USB or
             | I2C.
        
               | LeifCarrotson wrote:
               | I've used them in some industrial vision applications
               | with Dalsa cameras. They worked fine, I would have
               | preferred a fixed focus and a manual adjustment when the
               | requirements changed (it was much more difficult to get
               | good real-unit measurements and to compensate for
               | distortion) but they worked fine.
        
             | semi-extrinsic wrote:
             | IDK, have you looked at Kurokesu's offerings?
             | 
             | https://wiki.kurokesu.com/shelves/cameras
        
             | uuyi wrote:
             | Haven't gone near those mounts. All mine is Z mount
             | recently and F mount going back to the dark ages.
        
           | mod wrote:
           | My original canon digital rebel XT, I think, is 6MP, and its
           | output can be printed poster size with no visible degradation
           | at any normal viewing distance (like six inches or farther).
           | 
           | So yeah, I'll take some good glass and literally any sensor
           | post-2005 (when I paid $1100 for that 6MP)
        
         | gswdh wrote:
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2022-04-06 23:02 UTC)