Arducam announces a Raspberry Pi AI Camera-powered Pivistation 5 kit is coming soon | Tom's Hardware

All-in-one AI kit.

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Arducam is working on a new version of its popular Pivistation 5 all-in-one camera kit for the new Raspberry Pi AI Camera. The Pivistation 5 – IMX500 has now gone on pre-sale for $269 and includes a 4GB Raspberry Pi 5.

Being based on the new Raspberry Pi AI Camera kit means that all of the AI processing work is handled by the Sony IMX500 intelligent vision sensor, leaving the Raspberry Pi 5's Arm-based SoC free to handle other tasks.

Arducam has tested the kit and shows demos on the announcement page. The Sony IMX500 can handle up to a 640 x 640 image stream at 30 fps. The demos show the Raspberry Pi AI Camera smoothly running through object and pose detection, classification, and segmentation. If Arducam follows previous kits, it will include a micro SD card with all of the setup largely done, allowing users to plug in and get started.

Inside an official Raspberry Pi 5 Case we can see the new Raspberry Pi AI Camera on an Arducam branded holder. The holder isn't new, it has featured in Arducam's other Pivistation camera kits, but thanks to the Raspberry Pi AI Camera retaining compatibility with older cameras, it just slots into place. Underneath the camera holder is a heatsink to keep the Raspberry Pi 5's SoC cool. If the design follows the previous models, then there will be some form of active cooling too.

The new Pivistation 5 – IMX500 kit follows the design cues of the previous models, so we can expect the same official Raspberry Pi case top, but a 3/4 inch camera mount point is present on the side. This is useful for tripods and for mounting using a small rig clamp.

The kit hasn't been listed yet so we have no idea on the final price, but it bears a striking similarity to the other kits in the the Pivistation range. The kits range from the $99 Arducam Pinsight to the $299 Arducam KingKong for the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4. An educated guess at the price is around $200 to $250, this is based on the cost of a Raspberry Pi 5 4GB ($60), the Raspberry Pi AI Camera Kit ($70), case, cooling kit, micro SD card the customized software. Add on a little profit and $200 would be the lowest expected price.

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Les Pounder is an associate editor at Tom's Hardware. He is a creative technologist and for seven years has created projects to educate and inspire minds both young and old. He has worked with the Raspberry Pi Foundation to write and deliver their teacher training program "Picademy".

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