Most digital cameras — and our Camera Modules — use a rolling shutter: they scan the image they’re capturing line-by-line, then output the results. You may have noticed that this can cause distortion effects in some settings; if you’ve ever photographed rotating propeller blades, you’ve probably spotted the image shimmering rather than looking like an object that is rotating. The propeller blades have had enough time to change position in the tiny moment that the camera has taken to swipe across and observe the scene.

A global shutter — and our Global Shutter Camera Module — doesn’t do this. It captures the light from every pixel in the scene at once, so your photograph of propeller blades will not suffer from the same distortion.

Why is this useful? Fast-moving objects, like those propeller blades, are now easy to capture; we can also synchronise several cameras to take a photo at precisely the same moment in time. There are plenty of benefits here, like minimising distortion when capturing stereo images. (The human brain is confused if any movement that appears in the left eye has not appeared in the right eye yet.) The Raspberry Pi Global Shutter Camera can also operate with shorter exposure times - down to 30µs, given enough light - than a rolling shutter camera, which makes it useful for high-speed photography.

The flex cable inserts into the connector labelled CAMERA on the Raspberry Pi, which is located between the Ethernet and HDMI ports. The cable must be inserted with the silver contacts facing the HDMI port. To open the connector, pull the tabs on the top of the connector upwards, then towards the Ethernet port. The flex cable should be inserted firmly into the connector, with care taken not to bend the flex at too acute an angle. To close the connector, push the top part of the connector towards the HDMI port and down, while holding the flex cable in place.

We have created a video to illustrate the process of connecting the camera. Although the video shows the original camera on the original Raspberry Pi 1, the principle is the same for all camera boards:

Depending on the model, the camera may come with a small piece of translucent blue plastic film covering the lens. This is only present to protect the lens while it is being mailed to you, and needs to be removed by gently peeling it off.

Before proceeding, we recommend ensuring that your kernel, GPU firmware and applications are all up to date. Please follow the instructions on keeping your operating system up to date.

Then, please follow the relevant setup instructions for the libcamera software stack, and the Picamera2 Python library.

Available mechanical drawings;

Other available schematics;

The Camera Module 3 is built around the IMX708, which has the following spectral sensitivity characteristics.

The HQ Camera uses a Hoya CM500 infrared filter. Its transmission characteristics are as represented in the following graph.

We recommend two lenses, a 6mm wide angle lens and a 16mm telephoto lens. These lenses should be available from your nearest Authorised Reseller.

We recommend three lenses manufactured by Gaojia Optotech. These lenses should be available from your nearest Authorised Reseller.

For correct operation, both cameras require a 1.65v pull up voltage on the XVS line, which is created by a potential divider through the 3.3v and GND pins on the Raspberry Pi.

Connect a potential divider of 2 equally high impedance ( > 1kOhm) resistors to 3v3 and ground, creating 1.65V. This can be connected to either Pi.

Solder the GND and XVS touchpoints of each HQ Camera board to each other.

Connect the XVS wires to the 1.65V potential divider pull up.

To operate as source and sink together, the Global Shutter Cameras also require connection of the XHS (horizontal sync) pins together. However, these do not need connection to a pullup resistor.

The wiring setup is identical to the HQ Camera method, except that you will also need to connect the XHS pins together.

Create a potential divider made of 2 equally high impedance ( > 1kOhm) resistors resistors to 3v3 and ground, creating 1.65V. This can be connected to either Pi.

Solder 2 wires to the XVS touchpoint on each board and connect both of these wires together to the 1.65V potential divider.

Solder the GND of each Camera board to each other. Also solder 2 wires to the XHS touchpoints on each board and connect these. No pullup is needed for XHS pin.

On the boards that you wish to act as sinks, solder the two halves of the MAS pad together. This tells the sensor to act as a sink, and will wait for a signal to capture a frame.

If your board has transistor Q2 fitted, shown in blue on the image below, you will need to remove R11 from the board, as shown in red. This connects GP0 to XTR and without removal, the camera will not operate in external trigger mode. The location of the components is displayed below.

Next solder a wire to the touchpoints of XTR and GND on the GS Camera board. We can use a Raspberry Pi Pico to provide the trigger. Connect these to the Pico - XTR to any pin (GP28 is used in this example). Also connect Pico GND to Camera GND. A wiring diagram is shown below.

Run the code on the Pico, and set the camera running:

A frame should now be generated every time that the Pico pulses the pin. Variable framerate is acceptable, and can be controlled by simply varying the duration between pulses. No options need to be passed to libcamera-apps to enable external trigger.