Prophesee has introduced the GenX320 Starter Kit for Raspberry Pi 5, marking the first time the company's event-based neuromorphic vision technology becomes available to the Raspberry Pi developer community. The kit connects directly to the Raspberry Pi 5 camera connector, enabling development of real-time applications for drones, robotics, industrial automation, surveillance, and other fields. This development represents a significant expansion of event-based vision technology accessibility to a platform that has sold more than 60 million units and engages millions of developers worldwide.
Event-based vision represents a fundamental shift from traditional frame-based approaches by detecting changes in brightness at each pixel rather than capturing entire images at once. This approach allows sensors to respond in microseconds, operate with significantly less data and processing power, and achieve greater power efficiency compared to conventional sensors. The technology's advantages include faster response times, reduced data processing requirements, and lower power consumption, making it ideal for applications where traditional frame-based vision struggles.
The GenX320 Starter Kit provides access to Prophesee's Metavision event-based vision platform through the company's OpenEB open-source core available on https://github.com/prophesee-ai. Developers can utilize Python and C++ APIs to create solutions for applications including obstacle avoidance for drones, real-time SLAM, 3D scanning, defect detection, predictive maintenance, intrusion detection, and motion analytics. Built around the GenX320 sensor, the kit features a 320x320 resolution, greater than 140 dB dynamic range, event rate equivalent to approximately 10,000 frames per second, and sub-millisecond latency.
The sensor consumes less than 50 mW in sensor-only operation and includes a MIPI CSI-2 interface for native integration with Raspberry Pi 5. Developers can access drivers, data recording tools, and visualization resources through the GitHub repository and additional support materials through the Prophesee Knowledge Center. This enables cost-effective and efficient prototyping of advanced vision applications that were previously limited to specialized hardware platforms, potentially accelerating innovation in real-time computer vision applications across multiple industries.
