The Raspberry Pi Camera Module is a custom designed add-on for Raspberry Pi. It attaches to Raspberry Pi by way of one of the two small sockets on the board upper surface. This interface uses the dedicated CSI interface, which was designed especially for interfacing to cameras. The CSI bus is capable of extremely high data rates, and it exclusively carries pixel data. Raspberry Pi NOT INCLUDED

The board itself is tiny, at around 25mm x 20mm x 9mm. It also weighs just over 3g, making it perfect for mobile or other applications where size and weight are important. It connects to Raspberry Pi by way of a short ribbon cable. The camera is connected to the BCM2835 processor on the Pi via the CSI bus, a higher bandwidth link which carries pixel data from the camera back to the processor. This bus travels along the ribbon cable that attaches the camera board to the Pi.

The sensor itself has a native resolution of 5 megapixel, and has a fixed focus lens onboard. In terms of still images, the camera is capable of 2592 x 1944 pixel static images, and also supports 1080p30, 720p60 and 640x480p60/90 video.

The camera is supported in the latest version of Raspbian, Raspberry Pi's preferred operating system. Refer to raspberrypi.org for installation and use.