Originally posted by Rondec I think you'd be better off with one of the Qs. Sensor quality may be similar, but the optics available and ergonomics of this don't seem awesome by any means.
I don't think the point is to beat the Q in image quality, so much as it is a platform to build your own camera with whatever requirements, software, hardware, etc that you want. You could go without a display and build a rangefinder, we have certainly had a number of posts/posters who wanted an ultra-simple ILC. You could embed the module in some kind of unconventional place like a car dashboard or a hole in the wall, or I don't know, a hollowed out tree or a baseball bat. It's $50, it's not quite disposable, but almost. Plenty of TV shows like Mythbusters broke a lot of cameras, and maybe they could take something like this, put it in unique enclosures, and get some otherwise unobtainable shots. The sensor doesn't have to be in the same physical location as the Pi that drives it, you could connect the two with a cable. You could cut a hole in the back of your oven, cover it with some kind of high-temp glass, embed the camera behind that, and rig up a way to watch what you're baking remotely, or support your own YouTube cooking channel.
The whole idea is supplying components to build and invent things that nobody ever has before. If you want a refined, integrated body with super high IQ you go buy an off-the-shelf ILC.