Most applications using Raspberry Pi camera are perfectly happy to rely on the FPC flat cable connecting the Pi camera to a Raspberry Pi SBC. But for some use cases, the board and camera may have to be separated by some distance, for example, if you’d like to keep the single board computer indoor, while the camera is housed in a waterproof enclosure outside.
THine Solutions has designed a cable extension kit for the Raspberry Pi camera exactly for this purpose. The kit comes with Rx and Tx boards to be connected to the board and camera respectively., as well as a 2-meter CAT5e LAN cable, but the company says the solution supports up to 20-meter Ethernet cables.
THine camera extension kit content and key features:
- Supported cameras – Raspberry Pi camera V1.3 (for certain modes only), Raspberry Pi camera V2, and Raspberry Pi HQ camera
- Tx Board – Transmitter Board with THine THCV241A MIPI CSI-2 to
V-by-One HS Serializer - Rx Board – Receiver Board with THine THCV242 V-by-One HS to
MIPI CSI-2 Deserializer - 2-meter Cat5e LAN cable, straight; support up to 20-meter cables
- 2x ribbon Flex cables
- Mounting screws, short and long spacers for Rx & Tx boards
The system is plug-and-play without any software configuration needed. It relies on V-by-One HS technology, and the V-by-One <-> MIPI-CSI chips from the company. By checking out the datasheet, you’ll learn which Raspberry Pi camera V1.3 modes are supported, and discover that most Ethernet cables work at room temperature, but at low (-25°C) or high (+60°C) temperature, it’s another story.
One application that already took advantage of the camera extension kit is Pikon Raspberry Pi telescope project.
The Raspberry Pi SBC and camera would typically be attached to the telescope, and you’d need to bring a laptop or a computer plus a display to visualize the output of the telescope. It’s not super convenient, and it may be cold or really hot outside, but with the Raspberry Pi camera extension kit only the telescope and camera need to be outside. The Raspberry Pi board and computer can be used indoors.
THine kit can be purchased on Digikey for $58.78, and will soon be offered on OKdo. Further information may be found on the product page.
Via Electronics Weekly.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
Support CNX Software! Donate via cryptocurrencies, become a Patron on Patreon, or purchase goods on Amazon or Aliexpress
Wondering if this can be used for other boards that can use the RPi camera such as the nVIDIA Jetson Nano?
Looks interesting but a wifi camera looks like it could be a cheaper option.
Twenty metre cable? No hope. It works with the 2m cable supplied. 5m, 10m, and 20m cables do not work.
Has anyone really got this thing to work with a cable that is longer than the supplied 2m one? It works fine with that, but when I tried a 20m cable, the camera was no longer detected. A high quality 10m cable was no good either.
They have a list of cables in the datasheet. Did you use any of those? I can also see the range will depend on the ambient temperature as hot or very cold will have a shorter range. It also depends on the camera used. For example, the RPi HQ Camera does not support any 20-meter cables, only up to 15 meters (Shengwei CAT5E)
Many “active” USB cable extenders contain a USB hub inside them. So because of timing they may notwork. Its been like that all along. They do work with the (great) $6 RTL2832 sdr dongles allowing you to replace lossy coax cable at UHF, for example.