The Pi Eye Project started when I decided to use the Raspberry Pi computer as an aid to my research in vision. This tiny and inexpensive computer equipped with a high definition camera can run the entire Open CV (Open-source Computer Vision) suite of programs along with other software such as Heal Plots and Google’s Tensor-Flow.
The original design goal of the project was to create a mobile visual capture platform that could sense motion and acceleration and that could easily move the camera in pan and tilt directions to capture its visual environment. The Raspberry Pi equipped with the Sense-Hat sensor board had a chance to achieve the motion sensing, and what I needed was a simple case to house the Pi and the stepper motors that would do the pan and tilt.
This evolved into the current initial prototype of the Pi Eye seen below. This model will pan (horizontal left-right motion) but there is no tilt. That’s a second generation goal.