Raspberry Pi Forums

Hi everyone,

First post so be gentle with me please. I have had my Pi2 for a ouple of months, but not really been able to do much due to real life. But I have a couple of projects whizzing in my head.

One is a robot style project.

But the other is something that popped into my head only this morning, and I would like to ask a question to see if it is even possible.

I know from reading the forum, (which I have done regularly even before I bought my pi), that I cannot connect 2 Raspberry Pi cameras to one machine. However, is there a switch of some type that can be placed in the camera socket which will allow me to place 2 cameras and select one to use?
I am looking at selecting one camera and then displaying a video feed from that camera.

Or is this just pi in the sky?

Many thanks

Chris

Hi,

not sure about a ribbon cable switch, but you could just use a picam and a supported usb webcam to get your two cameras into one pi,

there are some mulyiplexers so you can use a couple [or more] RPI camera's
but the real question is why do you need to switch ?
the CM has both camera poerts broken out BTW

It was just a thought I had.

2 cameras each facing opposite to each other. Only one camera will be on/in use at a time. But they will only needed for short periods most of the time they will be switched off. Think of a reversing camera style application.
The feed will be to a small monitor in real time,

Sorry for the vague information, it is just the smallest spark of an idea and I am just wanting to know if it is feasible using the Pi.
It is automotive based so I will need to consider the issues regarding power supply and the potential for corruption of the SD card re shutdown.

The multiplexors sound like the way to go. I will undertake a google search and see what they say.

http://hackaday.com/2014/12/19/multiplexing-pi-cameras/

WRT power use a battery backed system that senses the remevol of the power then performs a shutdown