“Nice Pan and Tilt unit.
Really easy to install and nice Python examples. I ordered mine with a 15cm camera cable and it is just about long enough full range of the camera. May be worth getting a slighty longer camera cable.
It did throw me that the camera is upside down when installed (and the Pi is sat on the desk). Fortunately the software I'm using has the option to rotate the camera image.
When I got mine I set to work making a NodeJS wrapper for the lower level python library. It is available as an NPMJS package.
I then added in Pan/Tilt support to the Raspberry Pi ONVIF Server Project (called RPOS).
RPOS makes the Pi + Pi Camera + Pan-Tilt HAT into a Profile S ONVIF Camera.
Overall the kit is nice and well priced and fits well well in the Pimoroni Pibow case that I bought.”
“For a while I've wanted to do a face-follower project for kids in our Computer Club and had spent hours trying to compile OpenCV on a Pi. I hadn't even thought about how you drive the servos, but with the accompanying tutorial and the latest Raspbian updates, you've got the lot, out of the box! It just took me a little while to realise I'd got the servos swapped but having fixed that it worked immediately. However, the scripts don't seem to work headless - you need a dedicated monitor, but I think that's a problem with OpenCV or its Pi port. Possibly it'd work if you ran an X server on the PC and tunnelled X through ssh.
Just one little niggle - the software currently only seems to work with RGBW Neopixels. I've got various RGB ones and thought to myself who needs W when you've got R, G and B? Maybe you can get much more light for less current drain with the W. There's a function for setting the type to RGB but it doesn't appear to be fully implemented.”
“A must-have if you want to use your pi for a DYI video surveillance. Documentation could be a better, but most questions can probably be answered in the support forums and Google, at least mine were.
I hope this thingy will have a long life.”
“I purchased the pan and tilt servos about 12 months ago but struggled to get them working so shoved them in a box and forgot about them.
When I saw this hat I had to give it a go. It arrived a couple of days after ordering and today I spent about 10 minutes putting it together, it was very easy and I had the python library downloaded and the servos were swiveling around smoothly in no time.
As mentioned in another review the white plastic bolts are quite long so need snipping however make sure you leave enough thread on the top two if you intend to mount the led strip holder at a later date. I didn't and now I need to get more bolts when I get the led strip. Other than that it was plain sailing.”
“I have to give you a great review, its not often you are so pleased with a purchase that you spend some time beaming with pleasure and chortling mightily at this highly amusing little robot.
I suggest to anyone to get the full kit, the pan tilt hat fits perfectly on a coupe pibow, in fact know I have seen it even if you have a case I would suggest swap it for a pibow coupe as the pantilt hat is designed to fit perfectly and uses the standard camera ribbon cable.
When the pibow first turned up it was a bit of a mweh! At these layers of plastic, but its only till its assembled that you realise a conventional case can not do that and hence the title, but generally its all just simple genius, from construction, presentation to action.
Once complete you have to run the facetracking example as commercial face tracking camera have been around for a long time but their polish misses something very important that the full kit has in abundance.
Maybe because you have just built it yourself, maybe the servo squeaks and open construction and visible feed wires create personality, you end up with your own miniature desktop Wall-E.
Pimorini I seriously think you are crazy not to offer these ready assembled with a working autostart script with ssh & vnc access activated as before the builder side kicks in this is just a perfect desktop gadget that kids will love.
Also is it just me or does the Pi3 outperform a Chromebit as without benchmarks my feeling is that it is.”
“Really well made product, with a very good python library! simple setup and install enabling me to get started in a matter of minutes. Very good price considering the pan tilt kit alone's nearly ВЈ20”
