Why I Had to Ditch the Raspberry Pi Pico for My Stereo Camera Project

So, confession time. I made a pretty big hardware mistake at the start of my stereo camera project. You know how sometimes you think you've got everything figured out, and then reality hits you with a big "nope"? Yeah, that was me with the Raspberry Pi Pico.

The Original Plan (That Didn't Work)

I started this whole thing wanting to build a cheap VR content creation system. The idea was simple - take two cameras, sync them up, and boom, you've got stereoscopic video for VR headsets. I thought I was being clever by going with the Raspberry Pi Pico and ArduCam OV5640 modules. Small, cheap, what could go wrong?

Everything. Everything could go wrong.

The SPI Bandwidth Reality Check

Here's what I didn't properly think through: the Pico uses SPI (Serial Peripheral Interface) to talk to the cameras. And SPI, while great for many things, just doesn't have the bandwidth for high framerate video from two cameras simultaneously.

I spent way too many hours trying to get decent video quality out of this setup. The frame rates were terrible, the synchronization was a mess, and the video quality looked like it was from 2005. Not exactly the "democratizing VR content creation" experience I was going for.

The ArduCam OV5640 is actually a decent little camera module, but asking it to push quality video through SPI alongside another camera? That's like trying to drink a milkshake through a coffee stirrer. Technically possible, but really not pleasant.

Enter the Raspberry Pi 5

After banging my head against this for weeks, I finally admitted defeat and switched to the Raspberry Pi 5. And honestly? Night and day difference.

The Pi 5 has dual MIPI CSI camera ports, which is exactly what you need for this kind of project. MIPI CSI is designed for camera data - way more bandwidth than SPI, proper synchronization support, and it actually handles the video processing pipeline properly.

Key differences I noticed:

Frame rates went from "slideshow" to actual usable video
Synchronization between cameras became much more reliable
Could actually achieve resolution capabilities that exceeded my initial 1080p expectations
No more weird artifacts from bandwidth limitations

What I Learned

Research your interfaces properly - I knew SPI was slower than MIPI CSI, but I didn't really understand what that meant for dual camera video until I tried it.
Sometimes "cheaper" costs more - The time I wasted on the Pico setup probably cost more than just starting with the Pi 5.
Bandwidth calculations matter - Always do the math on your data throughput requirements before committing to hardware.
Prototyping is essential - I should have built a quick test with one camera first to verify the bandwidth assumptions.

The Technical Details

For anyone curious about the specifics:

Pi Pico + ArduCam setup:

SPI bandwidth: ~10-20 Mbps (theoretical max, real-world much lower)
Two cameras trying to share this bandwidth
Had to compromise heavily on resolution and frame rate
Synchronization was basically impossible

Pi 5 + dual MIPI CSI:

Each MIPI CSI lane can handle ~1 Gbps
Dedicated camera processing pipeline
Hardware synchronization support
Can actually handle the video processing I needed

Moving Forward

The Pi 5 setup is now working great with FFMPEG for video processing and Python automation scripts. I've even integrated it with Godot 4 for the VR side of things, using the XR toolkit for headset compatibility.

The lesson here isn't that the Pi Pico is bad - it's actually great for lots of projects. It's just not the right tool for dual-camera video capture. Sometimes the "obvious" choice (smaller, cheaper board) isn't the right choice for your specific use case.

If you're thinking about building something similar, just start with a Pi 4 or 5 with proper camera ports. Trust me on this one - save yourself the headache I went through!

Current Status

The stereo camera system is now working well with:

Raspberry Pi 5 dual camera setup
FFMPEG pipeline for video processing
Godot 4 with OpenXR for VR playback
MAX-Scene Classifier integration for content tagging

Sometimes you have to take a step back to take two steps forward. The Pi Pico detour taught me a lot about hardware interfaces, even if it wasn't the path to my final solution.

Have you run into similar hardware compatibility issues? I'd love to hear about your experiences - drop me a message through the contact page!