There's seemingly no limit to what makers can create with the Raspberry Pi. The flexibility provided by the GPIO adds a world of options when it comes to accessories and add on modules. Today we've got a wonderful example to share that explores the depth of that compatibility in the form of a Sensorpack put together by maker and developer Philip Gutjahr.
According to Gutjahr, this device is essentially a sensor array that can be used to gather a wide variety of information including depth measurements, thermal and even RGB data. It relies on a handful of sensors that are connected to a Raspberry Pi 5 and is even fitted with a Raspberry Pi Pico to help pro-process the thermal camera.
Gutjahr hasn't specified exactly what the Sensorpack was developed for beyond experimentation. He intendeds to use the sensors together to create a "colormapped pointcloud" (commonly used for 3D mapping) along with "joint bilateral upsampling" (used to refine the resolution of a low-resolution images) to build on the accuracy of the thermal and depth sensor data with the RGB sensor information used as a reference point.
The main board powering the project is a Raspberry Pi 5. It's connected to an Arducam ToF camera, an Arducam IMX519 16MP module and uses a Pimoroni MLX90640 Thermal Camera breakout with a Raspberry Pi Pico to complete the sensor array. Everything is housed inside of a custom case designed by Gutjhar using 3DS Max which was printed using a Prusa Slicer.
All of the software for the project is intended to be made open source. As such, you can explore what's been created so far over at GitHub where Gutjahr invites any interested parties to contribute, if desired. This is a good place to check back for updates as he has plans to update the project in the future.
If you want to get a closer look at this Raspberry Pi project, you can check out the project page shared to Reddit.
Get Tom's Hardware's best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox.
Ash Hill is a contributing writer for Tom's Hardware with a wealth of experience in the hobby electronics, 3D printing and PCs. She manages the Pi projects of the month and much of our daily Raspberry Pi reporting while also finding the best coupons and deals on all tech.