PiSight
I put a Raspberry Pi inside an Apple iSight. You can read more about the PiSight on Medium.
Hardware
| Part | Info | Price (2020) |
|---|---|---|
| Apple iSight | Available new and used on eBay | $15 to 150 |
| Raspberry Pi Zero | The W version adds Wifi, which makes working with it easier and opens it up to more applications | $5 or $10 |
| Raspberry Pi Camera V2 | Supports 1080p@30 or 720p@60, at a 62° horizontal field of view | $29.95 |
| M2.6 screws | 4 of M2.6 x 0.45 mm Thread, 6 mm long | $9.26 for 25 |
| M2 screws | 2 of M2 x 0.4 mm Thread, 4 mm long | $13.28 for 100 |
| O-ring | Covers the gap around the lens | $6.16 for 50 |
| Raspberry Pi Zero camera cable | A few options, but the 15 cm long narrow ones seem to work best | $3.49 |
| Micro-USB cable | Many options, just need to fit the iSight adapter | $8.99 |
| 3D-printed frame | Use PiSight.stl or PiSight.step, dimensions in mm, cost varies significantly depending on material quality |
$50 to $200 |
Software
The PiSight camera implements the UVC standard via the Gadget API, which turns the Raspberry Pi and camera into a plug-and-play USB webcam. I used the instructions in David Hunt's blog post, with a few modifications in my own fork of uvc-gadget.
I consolidated these steps into a setup script, so you simply need to install Raspberry Pi OS, enable the camera and serial interfaces via raspi-config, and then run:
git clone https://github.com/maxbbraun/pisight
cd pisight
sudo ./setup.shUpdate: There is now an alternative setup option thanks to the showmewebcam project, which is better maintained and provides pre-built optimized images (provided you don't mind seeing Piwebcam instead of PiSight in settings).
