The camera is used by connecting it directly to the Raspberry Pi and is controlled completely by software, no hardware adjustments are required.

The camera is connected using a CSI cable to the Raspberry Pi. Depending on the Raspberry Pi model, different CSI cables needs to be used because the size of the port differs between these.

For a Raspberry Pi 4 a 15-pin to 15-pin cable is used, which is normally the cable that comes with the camera. This type of cable is equally wide on both ends.

For a Raspberry Pi 5 a 15-pin to 22-pin cable is used, often called a Standard-Mini camera cable. This cable needs to be ordered separately from the camera. This type of cable has different widths on both ends.

The camera is connected to the camera port/ports on the top of the Raspberry Pi board. On the Raspberry Pi 5 these ports are called CAM/DISP 0 and CAM/DISP 1 and on the Raspberry Pi 4 the camera port is marked simply with “camera”. Below is an example of a Raspberry Pi camera connected to a Raspberry Pi 5.

Note that the Raspberry Pi 4 has one camera port and the Raspberry 5 has two camera ports.

The camera is delivered with a protective plastic film over the lens. Remove it before usage.