Smart hardware choices
With great ecosystem diversity comes a great amount of choice.
Long gone are the halcyon days when the Raspberry Pi platform consisted of just one or L two models. We are using the Raspberry Pi 4 due to the availability of the Neon ISA, but that is just one of the necessary considerations.
Image processing is one of the lowest hanging fruit known to AI developers, so obviously a camera module is required – the problem with that is the availability of multiple different candidates waiting to fill the gap.
We are using the Camera 2 module we purchased some time ago – while it lacks autofocus and might not be the most cutting-edge offering, the image quality (in well-lit areas) is more than enough for our needs. Keep in mind that AI algorithms can usually cope very well with bad image quality.