back to article Raspberry Pi AI Camera takes inferencing load off the CPU

Raspberry Pi has launched a camera module with AI smarts on board. But all that inferencing goodness comes at a price. Looking for all the world like a normal camera module – if ever so slightly thicker – the Raspberry Pi AI Camera is based on Sony's IMX500 Intelligent Vision Sensor, which combines a 12.3-megapixel CMOS image …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I wonder if it could identify cars passing my house as such, or more importantly the lorries that are banned, or if its so general that it will class them all as vehicle?

    1. James Hughes 1

      Yes

      This is entirely down to the training data use to create the model. Lots of data on this on the Pi and Sony websites, but you would need to get a lot of photos of the different vehicles in varying weather and road conditions. 100s good, 1000s better. You might be able to use video then extract the frames to feed into the model. Processing the data will take a long time, 24hrs or so on a decent machine.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Yes

        French speed cameras can differentiate between cars and lorries in real time, with no need for AI at all. Lorries are bigger, which must help...

        1. jdiebdhidbsusbvwbsidnsoskebid Silver badge

          Re: Yes

          Some French autoroute toll booths can't tell the difference between a lorry and my car with a bike on the roof - the ticket pops out of the high up slot for a lorry driver, not the low down one for a car driver.

          1. RegGuy1

            Re: Yes

            Or they are really smart and someone doesn't like you. :-)

        2. Nik 2

          Re: Yes

          Average speed cameras work by reading registration numbers, so it's always surprised me that they can't look these up on a DVLA database and see to which class of vehicle they belong.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Yes

        This is great. Love the subheading and will wait until they fix that b4 buying.

        I want to build a CCTV that does face recog. So I know who strangers are. Luckily I live near a bistro whose patrons are somewhat noisy on occasion. With this linked to my intercom that can broadcast audio from the Pi, I can ID people and get the intercom to speak their name and all details on the net about them at a legal level of 90db.

        Auto-focus is essential for this.

    2. Lazlo Woodbine Silver badge

      CCTV cameras have been able to differentiate large and small vehicles for some time, and they tend to use similar Sony camera modules.

      There's almost certainly training data available that would help you set this system up, even if you have to do the final training yourself by pointing the camera at the road and showing it the size of a car, and a lorry.

      A manual focus lens is always preferable for this kind of job, as focus won't wander as objects pass by.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        "There's almost certainly training data available that would help you"

        On GitHub.We are evaluting a few of the models at the moment and they are well established. Not much between them really. Number plate recog is there, but it has a monthly cost as they pull the data from a subscription source.

        Face recog and number-plate models plugged into your local Ollama (best under Linux if you can handle it - Mint) with RAG database of data you want added *see that top-notch article on here a little while back about setting up RAG with LLM.

        P.S. A recent report found that more than 80pc of those working in AI/SI especially in Jail-breaking/Encoding hacks would be classified as mildly insane. HTH. This also affects LLMs. The smarter they get the more insane the might appear to the knuckle-draggers.

        No votes

    3. Munchausen's proxy
      Trollface

      It's got AI in it. It will class them all as cats.

  2. Little Mouse

    How big are the libraries?

    Obviously, it can't all be "built-in" - There must be a chunk of back-end look-ups going on once the camera has done it's initial - ummm - "triage"? Could all that back-end data sit on the PI itself, keeping everything self-contained, or would it absolutely require a connection to the wider world?

    Or does it just depend on the complexity of what I'm trying to classify?

    1. James Hughes 1

      Re: How big are the libraries?

      The camera does all the inferencing.

      Take a look at this. https://developer.aitrios.sony-semicon.com/en/raspberrypi-ai-camera

  3. Ian Johnston Silver badge

    So this week "AI" means "pattern recognition", does it? Or is that all it has ever meant?

    1. Little Mouse

      AI can mean whatever you want it to these days, but to be fair, being able to recognise / identify "things" was one of the typical use-cases put to us back in my CompSci degree 35 (!) years ago

    2. Ken Hagan Gold badge

      I think it has always meant that, but an image is just a lot of data and a classification is just a (much) smaller amount of data so although it isn't "I" a sufficiently general-purpose way of constructing classifiers is still useful.

    3. bananape4l

      https://www.reddit.com/r/datascience/comments/xdv6nz/lets_keep_this_on/#lightbox

  4. bananape4l

    AI in the PI

    just 6 days ago you wrote an article about raspberry pi making profits without added AI. not one week, that headline lasted. your own.

    it's still recommended below in the recent articles.

    1. werdsmith Silver badge

      Re: AI in the PI

      That article was about the first post IPO results report which covered the period for the first half of 2024 - before this camera was announced and the Hailo AI kit appeared on 4th June.

      So it covered Raspberry Pi making profits without AI correctly.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Wish they would fix the Pico 2 E9 bug

    As I would like a drop in replacement for the original Pico.

  6. Chairman of the Bored
    Go

    Excellent little camera

    I have no use for the "AI" stuff. But I'm a huge fan of the Sony sensor. Fast, high resolution, reasonably low noise, and surprisingly uniform across the array. Slap that behind a decent C-mount lens and even a modest rPi 3 becomes a respectable digital camera. Slap it on a small reflector telescope and it breathes new life into that machine. Remove the IR filter, then point it skyward for more fun.

    Fixed focus is not a problem when it's pointed at a bird feeder precisely 2m away :) Ive gotten some outstanding shots, and my kids have named all their favorite birds. Every my daughter away at college will occasionally SSH I to the pi cam to check up on "her" birds. Fun habit.

    1. druck Silver badge

      Re: Excellent little camera

      I'm still waiting for the Sony STARVIS 2 camera to become available for the Pi. You can still get the first version arducam, but the resolution isn't sufficient.

  7. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Thumb Up

    Just think for a moment about how far we've come..

    3k x 4k pixel for $70

    This is the visual equivalent of the first 16bit audio ADC's. That's producing a signal on a 5V range where it changes by 78 micro volts (which needs a very stable reverence voltage) on a LSB change.

    And that's now hobbyist grade.

    So kind of impressive.

    1. Mike 125
      Happy

      Re: Just think for a moment about how far we've come..

      > 78 micro volts (which needs a very stable reverence voltage) on a LSB change.

      which I appreciate with the appropriate reference.

      Yep, this is cool stuff, soon to be available at my local RS and Farnell... hopefully.

      1. Steve K

        Re: Just think for a moment about how far we've come..

        The PiHut have them (or did yesterday at least....)

  8. OscarG

    Every Pi camera has been utter trash. Instead of simply delivering a higher-quality, low-noise camera... they deliver this.

    Sad.

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