Notifications
Clear all
Topic starter
2026-02-09 9:35 am
I have a raspberry pi 500. A birthday present. I come to it from an Arduino perspective, so am a little unfamiliar with it. Not the concepts, just the hardware. I want to connect it to a camera, an AI camera, that would sit on my verandah. Everywhere I look I see RP 5s, 4s and others being attached with ribbon connectors. My RP has 40 pin connector for HATS and cables. I want my RP to sit on my desk and the camera to be on the lookout for cats. Can I connect the two? Using my LAN? Do I need another RP to screw onto the AI camera, connect the ribbon and send the data to my RP 500?
Same goes for lots of other peripherals I see that attach in ways other than with the 40 pin connector, but I'll leave those for the moment.
Greetings from Australia.
Climate change is not cool.
2026-02-09 7:01 pm
Unfortunately, the Raspberry Pi 500 lacks the CSI connector required for a standard Raspberry Pi Camera or the Pi AI Camera. The only type of camera you can use is a USB camera.
However, you could probably use the Arducam PiNSIGHT camera with it, as it only requires the Raspberry Pi 40-pin GPIO and a USB cable. You would need a 40-pin GPIO extension, as the PiNSIGHT is intended to be mounted on the Raspberry Pi itself, which would be awkward on the 500.
I looked at the PiNSIGHT last year - check out this article to see how it works.
And Greetings from Canada!
😎
Bill
"Never trust a computer you can’t throw out a window." — Steve Wozniak
2026-02-09 8:40 pm
@aljihadi
I want my RP to sit on my desk and the camera to be on the lookout for cats. Can I connect the two? Using my LAN? Do I need another RP to screw onto the AI camera, connect the ribbon and send the data to my RP 500?
@dronebot-workshop
Unfortunately, the Raspberry Pi 500 lacks the CSI connector required for a standard Raspberry Pi Camera or the Pi AI Camera.
I take it that the Arducam AI Camera having a usb connection means it is not limited to a RPi.
Ideally you would use security webcams with wireless connections to your PC (or RPI 500) to monitor cats (or anything else). This would mean AI image recognition software would be required to use the incoming images. I suspect AI has already been trained to recognize cats along with a few other things like faces and people.
I only have the original RPi which I purchased from Altronics to build a Linux computer using wireless keyboard, mouse and an LCD touch screen but I confess I haven't done much with it apart from flash LEDS and read push buttons.
My interest began long ago and I had to write my own image processing software. One technique was to detect moving edges which would outline the moving object (cat or human or insect) for analysis. You can use it to determine the direction in which the object is moving. Motion is one of the visual processes that humans also have in the older brain. Damage to it means you can't see things moving they just change position.
2026-02-09 10:10 pm
I take it that the Arducam AI Camera having a usb connection means it is not limited to a RPi.
No, it also uses the Raspberry Pi GPIO.
"Never trust a computer you can’t throw out a window." — Steve Wozniak
Topic starter
2026-02-10 1:42 am
@dronebot-workshop Many, many thanks Bill. Honoured to have a reply from you yourself.
That stray cat frightening my kitten through the cat net screen is going to be sorry!
Climate change is not cool.