12Mpixel AI image sensor from Raspberry Pi

Raspberry Pi has announced a 12.3Mpixel AI camera, based on Sony’s IMX500 intelligent sensor, which “supports on-board processing for a variety of neural network models, leaving the processor in the host Raspberry Pi free to perform other operations,” according to Raspberry Pi.

Alongside the image sensor is a RP2040 microcontroller for neural network frame firmware, a DSP and ram, and together they can augment still or video images with tensor meta data for further processing on the host – running rpicam-apps or Picamera2.

“Support for tensor metadata in the libcamera and Picamera2 libraries, and
in the rpicam-apps application suite, make it easy for beginners to use, while offering
advanced users flexibility,” said Raspberry Pi.


Input tensors can be 640 x 640, and in int8 or uint8 formats.


The module comes pre-loaded with MobileNetSSD.

Sensor modes include 4,056 x 3,040 10bit at 10frame/s or 2,028 x 1,520 at 40frame/s, and it has 1.55 x 1.55μm pixels.

Dimensions are 7.8mm (‘1/2.3’) for the sensor and 25 x 24 x 11.9mm for the module – the latter the same footprint and mounting holes as the company’s Camera Module 3, but taller to accommodate the lens, which manually-focuses over 200mm to infinity.

Steve Bush

Steve Bush is the long-standing technology editor for Electronics Weekly, covering electronics developments for more than 25 years. He has a particular interest in the Power and Embedded areas of the industry. He also writes for the Engineer In Wonderland blog, covering 3D printing, CNC machines and miscellaneous other engineering matters.

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