We all know that there is a CSI connector on the Raspberry Pi to facilitate the connections of a small camera to the processor, but how should we facilitate the small camera itself?

As a professional camera manufacturer and solution provider, Arducam has been obsessed with this question for the last 6 years, and came up with a lot of solutions like adding a lens mount, a switchable IR cut filter, a multi-camera adapter, autofocus control, and most recently, MIPI camera support to the camera board of OV5647 and IMX219.

Is it a perfect time to take a good break now since we have already covered most use cases? I don’t think so. Arducam never settles down, and we want to push the cameras for Raspberry Pi to the extreme.

I am glad to introduce you to our newest PTZ camera for the Raspberry Pi. It’s real PTZ with servos for directional control and varifocal lens for optical zoom, and it supports autofocus and IR cut switch control.

Here is a short YouTube video to give you an idea on this nice little camera.

What Are PTZ Cameras

PTZ is an abbreviation for pan, tilt and zoom and reflects the movement options of the camera, and a pan–tilt–zoom camera (PTZ camera) is a camera that is capable of remote directional and zoom control.

The Need for PTZ Cameras

A PTZ camera is not a still camera. Instead, it could move the camera and the lens, and that means a single camera can be used to monitor places that should be covered by multiple ones. You can save a lot of cost and time in purchasing and deploying the camera if a PTZ camera can handle the job. With its moveable lens, you will also be able to zoom the camera to see a specific area that you are interested in. To conclude, it’s “do more with less.”

PTZ Cameras Are Expensive, But the Raspberry Pi Ecosystem Is Not

A PTZ camera is usually expensive than the other surveillance cameras. This is what it looks like when you search PTZ camera on Amazon:

Arducam makes cameras, and we’ve made a lot of cost-effective ones for the Raspberry Pi. The whole idea about Raspberry Pi is “low-cost, high-performance … that people use to learn, solve problems and have fun. ” This is also the idea we are having here. It would be great if we can offer a cost-effective PTZ camera on the cost-effective Raspberry Pi.

Arducam R&D, Reliable Suppliers, and Informative Customers

Arducam has good relationships with both suppliers and customers.

On the one hand, Arducam works closely with all kinds of suppliers, especially those in optical lenses, to achieve better optical performance on our camera boards. The first time we got our hands on the newest varifocal lens from our supplier, we started to think that whether we could integrate this stuff with a raspberry pi camera project, and make a PTZ camera out of it.

On the other hand, we have a group of customers that really enjoy our product and services, and they will always give us new ideas on our products and push us to keep going forward until we surprise them with another new product. We’ve heard a lot of suggestions and proposals from our customers in this PTZ camera project, which really inspires our engineers. Without them, it would be much harder for us to present you with a PTZ camera for Raspberry Pi with optical zoom, autofocus control and switchable IR cut filter.

Possibilites

Although we have released this PTZ camera for Raspberry Pi as a new product, we still think that it’s more like a window to new possibilities. Customers will be able to make greater projects with this camera, such as adding image processing and recognition to the system so that the camera will be able to track and follow an object, and then zoom in to get the details.

Please let info@arducam.com know if you are interested in or have great ideas about this PTZ camera.

Check out the PTZ Camera here or get this cool cam from one of our distributors!