This is the third camera I've designed/made around the raspberry pi parts/ecosystem.
The repo has all the STL files, parts list, most wiring diagrams. The first one was the custom Pi Zero HQ cam which was featured on a Hackaday article/podcast.
The modular version (aside from being able to swap cameras) mostly has the latest software. Recently I added the ability to process videos in the background (ffmpeg merges wav/mp4 files together).
The camera uses crop-zoom-panning for dialing in shots with manual lenses. The menu is created by layering images/text with PIL. Live preview is a little slow as it's SPI based.
If anybody is a pro at python I'd appreciate insight on better code. I've mostly just followed a context-based folder layout regarding where everything is.
I have not added custom/manual settings yet, it uses auto settings for the most part except for when you use a V3 camera module (which has electronic aperture) then it uses the d-pad to set the focus/diopter value.
I have another camera in mind/future build although it's more tailored for videos.
Some sample video I've shot.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkjXkQD0j9w
Assembly video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXG-MoIw93Q
At some point I will rewrite the code for a new general purpose DIY camera software from what I've learned, that'll be an undertaking.
Here is a write up on topics covered by these camera iterations
https://medium.com/@jdc-cunningham/making-a-user-interface-f...
A lot of pictures and full menu map
And MS paint wiring diagrams
(1st camera) https://github.com/jdc-cunningham/pi-zero-hq-cam/tree/master...
(2nd camera orange) https://github.com/jdc-cunningham/modular-pi-cam/blob/master...
My observation regarding prices:
resistor - $.10.
resistor for Arduino: $10.00
Did anyone have any luck capturing stereoscopic videos at any meaningful quality? This used to be only possible with the Pi Compute module (unobtainium for a very long time) but the Pi5 finally exposes both camera ports.... while also dropping hardware encoding, which is likely to be a huge roadblock since I doubt there's enough CPU power + bandwidth to compress 2 4K streams at 60fps in realtime and store it. And I'd love to go even higher actually.
The official forums are surprisingly devoid of anyone trying this, which is not super encouraging.
I'd really like to experiment in doing some underwater VR180 photo/videography, I promise to share the results if anyone has any useful pointers (not strictly rPi related, but other platforms are even less promising. Happy for any unexpected hints tho!)
(Sorry for the barely-on-topic (if not outright offtopic)) but this is a rare chance to tap into HN's hive mind on this particular issue due to a Pi-camera related thread on the front page.
Great work!
I just really wish Raspberry Pi would come out with a truly HQ camera with a full frame 35mm sensor, or at least an APS-C sensor. I'd pay $1000-1500 for it, just to have something as good as a full frame camera but programmable and hackable.
I would love to build a full frame mirrorless camera that runs my own UI. I'm pretty sure I could code a much more advanced UI than Sony or Canon.
Their current HQ camera is more like an LQ camera and there is not a huge variety of high quality photographic lenses available for it.