Introduction
The SparkFun Red Vision Kit for RedBoard comes with the Red Vision Touch Display for RedBoard and Red Vision Camera Board - HM01B0 (Color) to add machine vision capabilities to the RedBoard IoT - RP2350. This kit comes with everything you need to quickly and easily add a camera and touchscreen display to your RedBoard IoT - RP2350 with no soldering required. Using the SparkFun MicroPython Red Vision code package, a MicroPython port of the popular OpenCV image processing library, you can add live image processing as well as advanced features such as object and contour detection.
In this guide we'll cover the hardware included in the kit, how to assemble it with a RedBoard IoT - RP2350 and use the SparkFun Red Vision MicroPython package with the kit.
Required Materials
In order to follow along with this tutorial you'll need the following items:
External Display Alternative Materials
If you're using the alternative version of the Red Vision Touch Display for RedBoard (Without Display) or would like to output video to an external display, you'll want the following items:
Topics Covered
This document contains three main sections: Quickstart Guide, Hardware and Software.
The Quickstart Guide assumes users understand how to use development boards with MicroPython including updating MicroPython firmware and knowledge of their preferred MicroPython interpreter or IDE. It covers a quick assembly and then jumps right into getting the necessary software packages installed to start running code in just a few short minutes.
The Hardware pages cover a hardware overview that provides a detailed overview of the boards included in the Red Vision Kit for RedBoard in detail as well as a hardware assembly page which goes over the steps required to assemble and use the kit with the RedBoard IoT - RP2350.
The Software pages go over how to upload the Red Vision MicroPython firmware and run the included examples in the Thonny MicroPython IDE.
Suggested Reading
If you're not familiar with using the RedBoard IoT - RP2350 and MicroPython, we recommend reading through these tutorials before continuing on in this one: