Camera

Most digital cameras, including our Camera Modules, use a rolling shutter: they scan the image they’re capturing line-by-line, then output the results. You may have noticed that this can cause distortion effects in some settings; if you’ve ever photographed rotating propeller blades, you’ve probably spotted the image shimmering rather than looking like an object that is rotating. The propeller blades have had enough time to change position in the tiny moment that the camera has taken to swipe across and observe the scene.

A global shutter, like the one on our Global Shutter Camera Module, doesn’t do this. It captures the light from every pixel in the scene at once, so your photograph of propeller blades will not suffer from the same distortion.

Why is this useful? Fast-moving objects, like those propeller blades, are now easy to capture; we can also synchronise several cameras to take a photo at precisely the same moment in time. There are plenty of benefits here, like minimising distortion when capturing stereo images. (The human brain is confused if any movement that appears in the left eye has not appeared in the right eye yet.) The Raspberry Pi Global Shutter Camera can also operate with shorter exposure times - down to 30µs, given enough light - than a rolling shutter camera, which makes it useful for high-speed photography.

Before connecting any Camera, shut down your Raspberry Pi and disconnect it from power.

The flex cable inserts into the connector labelled CAMERA on the Raspberry Pi, which is located between the Ethernet and HDMI ports. The cable must be inserted with the silver contacts facing the HDMI port. To open the connector, pull the tabs on the top of the connector upwards, then towards the Ethernet port. The flex cable should be inserted firmly into the connector, with care taken not to bend the flex at too acute an angle. To close the connector, push the top part of the connector down and away from the Ethernet port while holding the flex cable in place.

The following video shows how to connect the original camera on the original Raspberry Pi 1:

All Raspberry Pi boards with a camera connector use the same installation method, though the Raspberry Pi 5 and all Raspberry Pi Zero models require a different camera cable.

Some cameras may come with a small piece of translucent blue plastic film covering the lens. This is only present to protect the lens during shipping. To remove it, gently peel it off.

Before proceeding, we recommend ensuring that your kernel, GPU firmware and applications are all up to date. Please follow the instructions on keeping your operating system up to date.

Then, please follow the relevant setup instructions for rpicam-apps, and the Picamera2 Python library.

Available mechanical drawings;

Other available schematics;

The Camera Module 3 is built around the IMX708, which has the following spectral sensitivity characteristics.

Raspberry Pi HQ Camera without IR-Cut filter.

Raspberry Pi GS Camera without IR-Cut filter.

The HQ and GS Cameras use a Hoya CM500 infrared filter. Its transmission characteristics are as represented in the following graph.

You can remove the filter from both the HQ and GS cameras. The HQ camera is shown in the demonstration below.

We recommend two lenses, a 6mm wide angle lens and a 16mm telephoto lens. These lenses should be available from your nearest Authorised Reseller.

We recommend three lenses manufactured by Gaojia Optotech. These lenses should be available from your nearest Authorised Reseller.

Solder a wire to the XVS test point of each camera, and connect them together.

Solder a wire to the GND test point of each camera, and connect them together.

For GS Cameras only, you will also need to connect the XHS (Horizontal Sync) test point of each camera together. On any GS Camera that you wish to act as a sink, bridge the two halves of the MAS pad with solder.

You will need to configure the camera drivers to keep their 1.8V power supplies on when not streaming, and optionally to select the source and sink roles.

If the cameras are not all started within 1 second, the rpicam applications can time out. To prevent this, you must edit a configuration file on any Raspberry Pi(s) with sink cameras.

On Raspberry Pi 5 or CM5:

On other Raspberry Pi models:

Now edit the copy. In both cases, delete the # (comment) from the "camera_timeout_value_ms": line, and change the number to 60000 (60 seconds).

Run the following commands to start the sink:

Wait a few seconds, then run the following command to start the source:

Frames should be synchronised. Use --frames to ensure the same number of frames are captured, and that the recordings are exactly the same length. Running the sink first ensures that no frames are missed.

If your board has transistor Q2 fitted (shown in blue on the image below), then you will need to remove R11 from the board (shown in red). This connects GP1 to XTR and without removing R11, the camera will not operate in external trigger mode. The location of the components is displayed below.

Next, solder a wire to the touchpoints of XTR and GND on the GS Camera board. Note that XTR is a 1.8V input, so you may need a level shifter or potential divider.

We can use a Raspberry Pi Pico to provide the trigger. Connect any Pico GPIO pin (GP28 is used in this example) to XTR via a 1.5kΩ resistor. Also connect a 1.8kΩ resistor between XTR and GND to reduce the high logic level to 1.8V. A wiring diagram is shown below.

This step is only necessary if you have more than one camera with XTR wired in parallel.

Edit /boot/firmware/config.txt. Change camera_auto_detect=1 to camera_auto_detect=0.

Append this line:

When using the CAM0 port on a Raspberry Pi 5, CM4 or CM5, append ,cam0 to that line without a space. If both cameras are on the same Raspberry Pi you will need two dtoverlay lines, only one of them ending with ,cam0.

If the external trigger will not be started right away, you also need to increase the libcamera timeout as above.

Enable external triggering:

Run the code on the Pico, then set the camera running:

Every time the Pico pulses the pin, it should capture a frame. However, if --gain and --awbgains are not set, some frames will be dropped to allow AGC and AWB algorithms to settle.