Repurpose web camera from Dell Inspiron 15?

[July]

My Dell Inspiron 15-i5559 laptop from 2016 just failed a few weeks ago. I want to salvage parts for use in DIY robotic projects or to enhance my day to day computing needs.

I extracted the webcam from and I see a number PC011628 written on the PCB board. I see other people selling a webcam that looks similar to mine. Some websites also suggest its called a RealSense 3D webcam.

Is it practical to re-purpose this webcam for use as an external webcam for my other computers or for a Raspberry Pi?

I found some guides that show how to turn a laptop webcam into a USB webcam, but in all those guides, I see the connectors only have 4 (FOUR) wires: Voltage positive, Ground, Data positive and Data negative (the 2 data wires are often braided together).

When I look at my PC011628, I see 10 (TEN) wires, and out of those 10 wires, 2 pairs of them are braided. I'm not sure what all these wires are for. But I'll take a wild guess - maybe the PCB011628 has two web cams and one LED light, and thus 2 wires for the LED, 4 wires for the first webcam, and 4 wires for the second webcam. If my guess is right, does that mean I can still convert one of the cameras for use via USB if I can figure out which wire is which? See image below:

(note: At bottom of image, you see 10 pins that correspond to the 10 wires in a cable)


Or is there an easier and more practical way to re-purpose this webcam for re-use on my Raspberry Pi or other computers?

 

[danadak]

I found some guides that show how to turn a laptop webcam into a USB webcam, but in all those guides, I see the connectors only have 4 (FOUR) wires: Voltage positive, Ground, Data positive and Data negative (the 2 data wires are often braided together).

Thats a USB interface.

I would think managing drivers for this a challenge unless it goes thru a USB interface.


Regards, Dana.

 

[matiut2]

Hello.
July Have you had any progeress on this? Did you manage to connect this camera to the USB port?
I have similar stuff lying around and want to repurpose it for my project.
In Windows device manager similar camera is recogneized as both USB device and camera (as shown in attahced image /sorry for Polish descriptions/). So it is somehow possible that this connector integrates two USB data lines. Could it be a USB C compatible plug? Do you have any ideas?

 

[rjenkinsgb]

From some Intel data, the interface may be USB 3.1 compatible - that could explain so many connections, to allow different host machine options.

If that is the case, it should have 5V & ground, two USB2 data lines, and two high speed pairs for USB3.1 data.
Plus possibly extra grounds, or duplicated power and ground?

This is the Intel data sheet for their versions of the module, presumably with the same control IC:

https://www.intel.com/content/dam/support/us/en/documents/emerging-technologies/intel-realsense-technology/Intel-RealSense-D400-Series-Datasheet.pdf