Arducam 5MP OV5647 NoIR MINI Spy Camera with flex cable

In order to meet the increasing need for Raspberry Pi Zero compatible camera modules, the Arducam team now released another add-on spy camera module that is fully compatible with Raspberry Pi Zero and Pi compute module.

The board itself is tiny, at around 60mm x 11.5mm. The neck width of the camera module is 6mm, this highlight making it perfect for an endoscope, spy surveillance, or other applications where size and image quality are important. It connects to Raspberry Pi Zero by way of a short ribbon cable. The camera is connected to the BCM2835 processor on the Pi Zero via the CSI bus, a higher bandwidth link that carries pixel data from the camera back to the processor.

This bus travels along the ribbon cable that attaches the camera board to the Pi. The sensor itself has a native resolution of 5 megapixels and has a fixed focus lens onboard. In terms of still images, the camera is capable of 2592 x 1944 pixel static images, and also supports 1080p30. 720p60 and 640x480p60/90 video. It attaches to Raspberry Pi Zero by way of the small sockets on the board’s upper surface. This interface uses the dedicated CSI interface, which was designed especially for interfacing to cameras. The CSI bus is capable of extremely high data rates, and it exclusively carries pixel data.