The Raspberry Pi, the credit-card sized single board computer developed in the UK, just added a visual component to its arsenal. A 5MP CMOS camera, the tiny cam will attach to the mini-computer and allow programmers to use it any way they see fit. And in order to celebrate this new addition to the family, the Raspberry Pi Foundation is sponsoring a little contest for photography-minded programmers as well.

Originally thought to be a 14-megapixel camera, the Pi’s cam was downgraded to 5 in order to keep it affordable. The camera will attach to the board with a ribbon cable and will be capable of capturing 2592×1944 still images and 1080p video.

It will cost only $25, and should begin selling sometime in April to Pi owners interested in fiddling around with photo and video applications.

Here’s a closer look:

The contest is where photographically-inclined Pi owners can get involved and possibly win a free camera in the process. The Raspberry Pi Foundation is looking to give away 10 pre-production models of the camera to whomever manages to come up with the most creative uses for it.

Community manager Liz Upton explains what the foundation is looking for:

“We want you to try to get the camera doing something imaginative. Think about playing around with facial recognition; or hooking two of them up together and modging the images together to create some 3d output; or getting the camera to recognise when something enters the frame that shouldn’t be there and doing something to the image as a result. We are not looking for entries from people who just want to take pictures, however pretty they are. … We want the people we send these boards to do something computationally difficult and imaginative with them so that the cameras are pushed hard in the sort of bonkers scheme that we’ve seen so many of you come up with here before with your Pis, and so that we can learn how they perform (and make adjustments if necessary).

You can enter to win one of the 10 giveaway models by submitting your “bonkers” ideas to iwantacamera@raspberrypi.org by March 12th. Happy programming!

(via Ars Technica via Wired)