Adafruit PiCowBell OV5640 Camera Breakout - 120 Degree Wide Angle Lens

Ding dong! Hear that? It's the PiCowbell ringing, letting you know that the new Adafruit PiCowbell OV5640 Camera Breakout with 120-Degree Wide-Angle Lens is in stock.

This is a quality OV5640 camera with a 5 Megapixel sensor element, a 120-degree wide-angle lens, plus all the support circuitry you need to start taking pictures with your Pico or Pico W. You can grab raw RGB images for image analysis, or use the built-in JPEG encoding to save images to an SD card or upload them to adafruit.io.

The RP2040 chip has a fast PIO interface peripheral and enough memory to interface with 'DVP' (8-bit parallel digital) cameras. These camera sensors have 8 image data pins, Pixel Clock, H Sync and V Sync signals, plus I2C configuration interface and a Reset plus power Down pin. That does mean a lot of GPIO are used! But we still have 6 GPIO pin available even after adding an SD cart and shutter button.

Camera PiCowbell Features:

• Interface for OV5640 Camera module including VSync: GPIO 0, Power Down: GPIO 1, HSync: GPIO 2, Pixel Clock: GPIO 3, SDA/SCL: GPIO 4 and GPIO 5, 8-bit Digital: GPIO6 through GPIO 13, Reset: GPIO 14, and VMotor connected to 3.3V for auto-focus modules.
• Micro SD Card: SPI on GPIO 16, GPIO 18 and GPIO 19; Chip select on GPIO 17; Optional SD Detect on GPIO 15.
• Shutter button on GPIO 22.
• Reset button.
• 16 MHz 'XClock' generated by onboard oscillator.
• Stemma QT port for I2C on GPIO 4 / 5.

This module does not have auto-focus capability; it is a fixed 'infinite' focus module.

Each order comes with an assembled PCB, camera sensor, and two pieces of 20-pin pin header. Header soldering is required.

Since this board has the camera pointing 'up', it's best used with the PiCowbell 'doubler' to keep the Pico’s BOOT button accessible, or by stacking the camera on top.

Options for headers include Pico Stacking Headers or Pico Socket Headers for various connection preferences.