The goal of the CMUcam project is to provide simple vision capabilities to small embedded systems in the form of an intelligent sensor. The CMUcam3 extends upon this idea by providing a flexible and easy to use open source development environment that complements a low cost hardware platform. The CMUcam3 is an ARM7TDMI based fully programmable embedded computer vision sensor. The main processor is the NXP LPC2106 connected to an Omnivision CMOS camera sensor module. Custom C code can be developed for the CMUcam3 using a port of the GNU toolchain along with a set of open source libraries and example programs. Executables can be flashed onto the board using the serial port with no external downloading hardware required.