Raspberry Pi MIPI Camera Module 1080p@30fps,On Board Build-in ISP,External Trigger, IR Cut Circuit,with 1080P 1/2.8Inch 2MP STARVIS Sensor IMX327 for Raspberry Pi 4 Zero 3 3b 3b+ A+ CM3+ CM3 (IMX327)

I just got this thing like uh 1.5 hours ago so I'm jusssst getting started, but already I'm getting excited about it. Please note one important thing: If a Raspberry Pi is not the microcomputer for everyone, then this camera is it's perfect match since it's not for everyone either. It's a seriously DIY-afflicted piece of hardware and you're probably not going to change the world with it in the first five minutes. This thing takes some work to set up and make it work right. Expect to work your Raspbian skillset, expect to work your electronics skillset as well. It's not brutal as RPi things go, but it's not the easiest either. Please note another thing: This is not your cheap piece of crap $21 RPi camera board. It's intended to be a more aggressive, higher performance device and so it is. I got the IMX290 model which is a Starvis sensor, intended for working with very low light environments. It has strong low light and IR capability, plus it has a mechanical IR blocking filter so that in bright light everything looks normal, and in low light it switches to mixed IR+visible light mode for maximum low light performance. That's why I bought it, and believe me, it will be schooled. So, it's a good cam that has a learning curve, and that's fine, that's what RPis were invented for. So far I've only just managed to make it record video, record some pictures, and stream live video using the suggested veye_raspivid / mplayer method to stream video from the RPi to my PC. It's actually easier to do all that than it seems at first blush. I'm going to try to force it to work with Rpi Webcam Interface, but that may be anywhere from difficult to impossible. For now though, I will use this review space to dump my experiences with the cam as I go, and hopefully offer some tips, tricks and various bits of how-to help. To start us out in that direction, here's my first hack: 1) Either get some streaming video going or a local preview window with the camera running, and make sure all looks good. 2) Establish the I2C settings functionality and make sure the camera is running in color (daylight) mode. 3) Using the I2C settings scripts included with the VEye setup package, send the command to the camera to enable night mode, like thus: ./veye_mipi_i2c.sh -w -f daynightmode -p1 0xFE 4) CAREFULLY, with needle nose pliers, pull the connector for the IR cut filter mechanism. It's the connector on the end of the thin red and black wires coming out of the black plastic lens assembly. Yes, you can do this with the camera running. This will prevent the IR filter from switching back in when you return the camera to daylight mode. 4) Now send the command to the camera to go back into daylight mode like thus: ./veye_mipi_i2c.sh -w -f daynightmode -p1 0xFF 5) The camera will switch back to color daylight mode, but the IR cut filter will remain out of the light path. The result is, you now have a camera that is color no matter how light or dark it is, and no matter if you enter daylight mode or nighttime mode. In daytime, certain objects like black clothes or foliage will take on interesting, daydreamy qualities, and at night, you don't lose all your color just because it got dark and the camera Gods think you can do without it. Yes, you lose the ability to do accurate color in the daytime, but that's easily fixed just by putting the connector back together. One nice touch would be to put a small switch inline in series with one of the wires, so you can cut the signal as needed without abusing the connector and wires. I've got a fun, crazy night ahead of me with this thing. More to come!! :-D Edit 4/8/2020: Did you miss me? Yep, I'm still here, and still torturing this poor camera. Since I got it, I've completely removed the lens assembly, replaced it with a straight, unfiltered CS lens mount, and gotten myself a small rainbow assortment of CS lenses to play with. The "best" out of them is still my 2.8mm prime lens that came with my ZWO ASI385 astronomy camera. It makes a viciously good all-sky camera when coupled with this IMX290 module. In fact, and you can believe me or not, this camera will easily *outperform* the ASI385 when driving both at 7 frames per second. You can't truly appreciate this until you actually see it in action. Hands down, it's the best meteor spotter camera I've ever used. I stream the camera into my LAN by CVLC generating an HTTP / H.264 stream, and I capture it on my PC using OBS Studio. The HTTP stream can be viewed on any of my LAN connected devices (phone, tablet, laptop, PC, whatever) using VLC Media Player, with a latency of around 2 seconds but exceptional video quality. I wanted a killer low light camera with good image quality, I had my doubts, I took the gamble, and I won bigtime in the end. It's a brutal little beast. :-) Now that the IMX290 version has seemingly disappeared, I'm very curious about the IMX327 version. The IMX327 sensor is slightly more sensitive, and uses slightly more modern technology. I'm wanting a couple of these anyway, and I may just go ahead and get one of them so I can fallback this IMX290 version to security camera uses, which believe me it totally KILLS it at that job. Then I can press the IMX327 into service as my live astro-cam. :-) Rick NR417

The IMX327 camera does well enough to not need IR for many cases.