Get a free Raspberry Pi camera
by Ivan

The Raspberry Pi camera has been on a few people’s radar for a while now, but today we can announce that the little PCB and sensor bundle is being given away by the Raspberry Pi Foundation to ten people that come up with the most creative use of the device.

“We want you to try to get the camera doing something imaginative,” community manager Liz Upton wrote. “Think about playing around with facial recognition; or hooking two of them up together and modging [sic] the images together to create some 3d output; or getting the camera to recognise when something enters the frame that shouldn’t be there and doing something to the image as a result. We are not looking for entries from people who just want to take pictures, however pretty they are.”

This little guy is going to go places.

The idea behind this isn’t just to reward creatives, but to do some hardcore testing. The foundation wants people to put these cameras in stressful situations that are difficult to envisage, thereby pushing the boundaries of what the device is capable of and making future generations of the tech easier to conceive.

The Raspberry Pi camera is a 5-megapixel CMOS image sensor from Omnivision, known as the OV5647. It attaches to the Pi using a ribbon cable and measures just 8x8x4mm. Combined with the lightweight Pi computer, it should allow for some very interesting shots to be captured.

Set for release in April, the camera unit will cost around £16. If you want to win one of these cameras, you can submit your ideas via the Pi blog.