The borescope cameras supplied with the kits have relatively low resolution and image quality compared to a smartphone or the Raspberry Pi Camera. That’s the tradeoff we made in order to include a camera that was cost effective, readily available with a long enough cable, sufficiently small in size, and didn’t require additional waterproofing components.
If you look back at v1.1, you’ll see that we experimented with using the Raspberry Pi Camera with a plastic mounting bracket, plastic cover, and somewhat cumbersome ribbon cable to HDMI adapters in order to achieve the cable length we needed:
(Sorry that there aren’t photos of the actual prototypes we built)
While the Raspberry Pi Camera solution produced better quality images, it required a complicated installation process, was significantly more expensive, and was bulkier on the z-axis. That’s why with v1.2 (the first kits we shipped to people), we went back to using borescopes. Because we ordered 500 of them, we were able to have the manufacturer customize the focus to 1m, rather than the 5-10cm that borescopes are usually adjusted to. While the borescopes do not produce as great of image quality, it is sufficient for running the weed detection software which was our primary need.
Should you want higher resolution/quality images, you can still use the Raspberry Pi Camera or a better USB-based webcam. If your bot is outdoors you’ll need to provide adequate rain-proofing for it.
In regards to the image used in the docs - that image was either taken with the Raspberry Pi Camera or maybe just my smartphone, I can’t remember. We used it for illustrative purposes and I can see now how it is misleading. We will update the v1.4 docs to include an image taken with a production borescope.
All the images shown in this GIF are from the production borescope camera: