Pixy: a fast, easy-to-use vision sensor

Pixy is a fast vision sensor you can quickly “teach” to find objects, and it connects directly to Arduino and other controllers.

Background

Image sensors are useful because they are so flexible. With the right algorithm, an image sensor can sense or detect practically anything. But there are two drawbacks with image sensors: 1) they output lots of data, dozens of megabytes per second, and 2) processing this amount of data can overwhelm many processors. And if the processor can keep up with the data, much of its processing power won't be available for other tasks.

Pixy addresses these problems by pairing a powerful dedicated processor with the image sensor. Pixy processes images from the image sensor and only sends the useful information (e.g. purple dinosaur detected at x=54, y=103) to your microcontroller. And it does this at frame rate (50 Hz). The information is available through one of several interfaces: UART serial, SPI, I2C, digital out, or analog out. So your Arduino or other microcontroller can talk easily with Pixy and still have plenty of CPU available for other tasks.

It's possible to hook up multiple Pixys to your microcontroller -- for example, a robot with 4 Pixys and 360 degrees of sensing. Or use Pixy without a microcontroller and use the digital or analog outputs to trigger events, switches, servos, etc.

Reference: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/254449872/pixy-cmucam5-a-fast-easy-to-use-vision-sensor