Raspberry Pi's new Global Shutter Camera is ideal for machine vision

Around two months after releasing the Raspberry Pi Camera Module v3, the computer company has now released the Raspberry Pi Global Shutter Camera, priced at $50. The pricing is competitive with other Raspberry Pi camera modules, which range from around $25 to $40 through DIY stores.

In a statement, Raspberry Pi co-founder Eben Upton explained, "Built around Sony’s 1.6-megapixel IMX296 sensor, the Global Shutter Camera is able to capture rapid motion without introducing rolling shutter artifacts. This makes it a great fit for sports photography and for machine vision applications, where even small amounts of distortion can seriously degrade inference performance."

Different than all the other Raspberry Pi cameras

Ever since Raspberry Pi started producing camera modules, they’ve all had rolling shutter sensors. A rolling shutter is a type of image capture in cameras that records the frame line by line on an image sensor instead of capturing the entire frame all at once. So if you try to capture things in fast-moving motion, things may get smeared.

If we want to eliminate this problem, we need to use a global shutter sensor, says Upton, which captures the whole image at once, reducing the chances of smearing.

Global shutter sensors tend to have a lower resolution than rolling shutter sensors of the same size: contrast the 7.9mm, 12-megapixel IMX477 sensor used in the High-Quality Camera with the 6.3mm, 1.6-megapixel IMX296.

This video uploaded by Raspberry Pi shows the latest Global Shutter Camera in action

Like all the other camera products of Raspberry Pi, the users can use the Global Shutter Camera with any Raspberry Pi computer that has a CSI camera connector.

According to a review by Hackaday, on the pros side, the global shutter camera has good light sensitivity and can record 1440 x 1080 pixels at 60 frames per second in video mode. The big con is that the resolution is a lot lower in comparison to the HQ rolling-shutter camera. 

The company announced its new product via a tweet:

🚨 NEW PRODUCT ALERT 🚨

Introducing the Raspberry Pi Global Shutter Camera: a 1.6-megapixel camera that's ideal for specialists working in machine vision and motion photography applications. Available now at $50.https://t.co/TYQPyksT5R

— Raspberry Pi (@Raspberry_Pi) March 9, 2023

A detailed list of other system requirements and specifications is available on Raspberry Pi’s website. The new global shutter camera is available through authorized resellers.