Analog Raspberry Pi Camera

Question

Electronics

For Raspberry, there is a compact camera connected via the cable connector on the board.
www.raspberrypi.org/camera

In principle, the idea is good - the USB port is freed. no need to connect a webcam, the interface is supposedly fast.
Like all goodies for Raspberry and Arduino , the price is completely inadequate, and delivery to Moscow costs more than the camera itself.
But the connector is completely standard and there are probably a lot of cameras that are interface-compatible.
Maybe someone knows what can be stuck instead of it?

Answer 1

Doesn't the usb specification allow branching up to 256 devices on a single port? And then it would be possible to get by with an ordinary hub.

Answer 2

As far as I know, no one has yet made alternative camera modules.

Answer 3

Generally strange, the camera interface is more or less standardized. Is it really so custom in RasPi that nothing else will fit? what is it - stupidity of developers or mockery?

Answer 4

As far as I know, there are ordinary CSI / DSI connectors.
But, as far as I understand, everything depends on the closed GPU driver, because. CSI / DSI are connected to it (to the GPU in the sense).

Answer 5

By the way. Will connecting the camera via I2C / SPI work?

Answer 6

The Pi Camera has a DCMI interface. Connecting over it doesn't just offload USB, DCMI has hardware support in the Raspberry Pi processor. This significantly increases productivity when working with the camera. In theory, any camera with a DCMI interface should work, but I haven't tried it. And, by the way, two USB and Ethernet hang on one hardware port of the processor.