Infra-red camera board bakes night vision into Raspberry Pi

From recording live TV to developing games and teaching, the list of what the humble Raspberry Pi can do is growing by the day.

Now, thanks to a new infra-red camera board that's hit online stores, you can live out your dream as a budget version of Splinter Cell's Sam Fisher (a little imagination may be required).

For $25 (£16.80, around AU$26), the new Pi NoIR module doesn't go so far as detecting nearby humans' body heat, but it should let you take clearer videos and photos during night time and in low-light conditions using the Raspberry Pi Model A or Model B.

That's because it removes the optical light filter found on the Raspberry Pi's standard 5-Megapixel camera board that was introduced earlier this year, allowing the device to capture infra-red light frequencies. It connects to the Raspberry Pi using a flat ribbon cable to 15-pin MIPI Camera Serial Interface connector.

Extended use

The Pi NoIR, which measures 20mm x 25mm x 9mm, opens up the Raspberry Pi up for use with a number of IR-focused application associated with nighttime activities. They include Infragrams (checking on plant health), astrophotograhy (star gazing), night security and wildlife photography.

You can still take regular photos with the camera of a resolution up to 2,592 x 1,944 pixels, and videos can be captured with a max video resolution of 1080p at 30 frames per second.

It was recently announced that the Raspberry Pi Foundation has build over one million of the diminutive computer in the UK, with a total of 1.75 million being baked to date.

• Tell us, then: why is the Raspberry Pi going back to school?