★★★★★
Amazing little camera for the experimenter
I’m always looking for a way to capture images with a Raspberry Pi or an Arduino project. I’ve tried a few of the ‘module’ types with ribbon cables that have the multipin edge connector with variable success. This camera however is different, it interfaces via USB 2.0. This simplifies connectivity immensely. It has the side bonus of being able to function as a webcam with your desktop or laptop computer should you choose. My Win-11 machine found it immediately using the built-in Camera App. You can even find a smartphone app that lets you use it with your phone or tablet. I’m very happy with the camera module, I’ll post a few images taken with the camera.
It uses a CMOS OV9712 one-megapixel image sensor, the maximum resolution is 1280 by 720 progressive, which makes it HD, and the image sensor is ¼” according to the lit. It draws about 125 milliamps current. With the proper app, it has adjustable parameters of Brightness, Contrast, Saturation, Hue, Sharpness, Gamma, White Balance, Contrast, and exposure. Probably the sensor found in many webcams. What sets this apart from other cameras is the wide field of view.
Dig out your RPi or your Arduino and start playing, this camera is a lot of fun and very useful. It gives you a very wide field of view of 170 degrees, I didn’t measure that but it is pretty wide. The circuit board gives you a couple of mounting options for a nice touch. This is great for monitoring motion or surveillance. I’m very happy with it.
★★★★★
FOV is only 140x52 degree, not 170 degree – but otherwise works very well.
This is a great plug-and-play camera. It was immediately recognized by the Windows 11 camera app, and worked perfectly. It has decent resolution (1280x720) and color balance, with native 24bit depth color. The auto gain function works well in different lighting, and the fixed focus lens is in focus at pretty much every distance (even a just few cm from the lens).
Unfortunately, the FOV is not 170 degrees by any stretch of the imagination. I measured it using two methods, and both times measured only 140 degree horizontal, and about 52 degrees vertical. I took a quick photo using this camera of an on-screen ruler (not to scale!) just to illustrate the fisheye distortion of the lens, so you know about what it looks like.
This was advertised as a 170 degree FOV, 1080x720P camera. It is 720P (which is actually 1280x720, and also what this camera really is), but it’s 30 degrees shy of 170 degrees. This is going to lose it 2 full stars, because it’s a very significant spec to get wrong, and will upset a lot of buyers who actually want a 170 degree horizontal FOV. It’s still wide angle, but not as wide as you think you’re getting. Everything else about the camera is great, so it gets to keep 3 stars. It works well, shipped in anti-static packaging, and came with good (but generic) instructions and a troubleshooting guide. I didn’t test on Linux, but it’s supposed to be plug-and-play there too.
Final rating: 3 stars. If this were advertised as a 140 degree FOV, I’d give it 5 stars, but it lost 2 stars for the FOV falling 30 degrees short of the advertised 170 degree spec.
