One of the themes that has emerged while researching and exploring boards for this year’s annual guide (Make: V91 available November 12^th on newsstands and in the Shed) is a new crop of devices which, rather than providing general AI-optimized compute, instead focus on a specific task or application, such as person detection or speech recognition. While computer vision is a well-established domain for the application of artificial intelligence, I’ve noticed an interesting crop of AI-focused boards emerging recently which are taking image-based machine learning to new heights of performance and accessibility.

Table of Contents

• Arducam PiNSIGHT

• Raspberry Pi AI Camera

• OpenMV Cam RT1062

• Make: Edition of Oxocard Connect Innovation Kit

• Make’s Community Round Update

Arducam PiNSIGHT

Arducam have been creating high-quality, cost-effective cameras for the Raspberry Pi and embedded platforms since 2012, and their immense portfolio has broadened further with the release of their PiNSIGHT “vision AI mate” for Raspberry Pi. This swanky-looking HAT-and-then-some provides a 12MP Sony camera sensor coupled with the OAK-SOM, adding 4 TOPS of AI-optimized compute, powered by the Intel Movidius Myriad X Visual Processing Unit. Combined with your existing Pi 5, the result is an attractive unit that resembles a pocket digital camera, complete with ¼”-20 tripod mount, and ready to run a plethora of models from the OpenVINO Open Model Zoo. The Arducam PiNSIGHT is available for $99.99, and requires the separate purchase of a Raspberry Pi 4 or newer.

Raspberry Pi AI Camera

Typically when Raspberry Pi releases an accessory, it seems to be because nobody else is doing it (such as the LEGO-Technic-compatible Build HAT), or because there are a sea of options, and the Pi people want to provide a simple canonical solution (such as the official keyboard and mouse). Their new AI Camera seems more like the latter, taking a leaf from the Arducam PiNSIGHT’s book with a combination of a high-quality 12MP Sony camera sensor and some extra silicon for encoding and AI acceleration. In this case, it’s Sony’s integrated IMX500 Intelligent Vision Sensor, whose onboard neural network inferencing capabilities obviate the need for cloud compute or even impinging on the resources of the main Pi CPU. The Raspberry Pi AI Camera is available now for $70 and is compatible with all models that have a camera connector, including the Pi 5, 4, 3 Model B+, and Zero 2 W.

OpenMV Cam RT1062

OpenMV are another well-respected player in the field of computer vision. I was a huge fan since the M7, which I believe was my first taste of MicroPython, as well as its H7 successor. OpenMV’s comprehensive ecosystem, comprised of an extensive range of cameras and sensor modules, add-on shields, a tightly-integrated integrated development environment, fantastic documentation, and an active community, wholeheartedly delivers on their stated goal of being the “Arduino for machine vision.”  And their latest offering, the OpenMV Cam RT1062 follows prior generations’ precedent of taking its name directly from the employed microcontroller, this time being the beefy 600MHz Cortex-M7 i.MX RT1062 from NXP. With 32MB SDRAM + 1MB of SRAM and 16MB of Flash, plus built-in Wi-Fi, the newest Cam is extremely capable out of the box. Compatibility with existing shields as well as the Edge Impulse platform enable myriad possibilities for expansion and exploration. The OpenMV Cam RT1062 is available starting at $120 with an OV5640 5MP image sensor.

OK, back to writing about boards for the guide instead of writing about boards for this newsletter – see you next month, and be sure to look for the 2025 Boards Guide on newsstands or in your mailbox! — David Groom, neck-deep in boards!

Make: Edition of Oxocard Connect Innovation Kit

We will be launching a new product at Maker Faire Bay Area, the Make: Edition of the Oxocard Connect Innovation Kit, developed by Oxon out of Switzerland. Maker Shed will be the North Americam distributor for Oxocard Connect. You are the first to hear about it.

Oxocard Connect Innovation Kit might be seen as a micro-bit with a slot for expansion cartridges. Or as a compact all-in-one electronics experiment kit. The pocket-sized controller comes with a breadboard as the default expansion cartridge. There are cartridges to experiment with light and audio, or sensor applications, such as measuring distance and testing your air quality, or making strange and beautiful music with a pocket-sized synth!

Once you set up Oxocard Connect to a computer, it will open the NanoPy coding environment with tutorials for learning how to use it. It’s really easy to get up and running and the basic products comes with a number of useful components for building your own circuits. It’s more than an electronics education kit. It’s an innovation kit that allows you to develop working applications based on your own ideas. Plus it boots up with Makey on its home screen.

Oxon co-founder Daniel Frey will be at Maker Faire Bay Area (in the Maker Shed area) to demonstrate the product and talk about its features.

For more information: Make: Edition of the Oxocard Connect Innovation Kit.

Make’s Community Round Update

Just a week ago, we opened up the opportunity for our community to invest in the company behind Make: magazine and Maker Faire. I am grateful to those investors who have decided to participate. I’m particularly glad to hear from those who invested and read their inspiring comments, which can be found here: www.wefunder.com/make/buzz. Here’s what one of our investors wrote:

So far, we have already exceeded our minimum fund-raising goal of $50,000 and are now hoping to reach our target of $1,235,000.

With the funds raised, we intend to launch more Maker Faires, fortify our magazine and books, launch more community tools, foster innovation locally and globally, and promote hands-on-learning and problem-solving in education.

There’s still time if you’d like to join in this community-raise. Please go to www.wefunder.com/make to make your investment.

Make Things is a weekly newsletter for the Maker community from Make:. This newsletter lives on the web at makethings.make.co

Don’t forget Maker Faire Bay Area is just about two weeks away, October 18-20. I’m really looking forward to it.