DSLR PHOTO BOOTH SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS PORTABLE
DSLR PHOTO BOOTH SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS SERIES

It could be done, but the clock was ticking! The optimal solution for me was the Raspberry Pi camera board. Even triggering the photo capture was a bit hacky, as on some models I would need to emulate the infrared (IR) remote signal.Ī webcam was a cheaper alternative with many of the desirable qualities, but they can be difficult to interface with. The problem was that getting a live preview from these cameras is very difficult on most impossible on some. This - or any other digital single lens reflex (DSLR) camera - would produce very high quality photos with fantastic automatic exposure settings. The initial solution for a camera was going to be an extra Nikon D40X. This meant I needed to select a camera and decide on the user interface for the booth. The first step for me was getting all of the hardware prototyped so that I could start developing the software, and thinking about what kind of enclosure it should all go into. With the large support community behind it, the Raspberry Pi is also very easy to set up and use. It is also a small board and very inexpensive. While the A+ model isn’t good for RAM intensive applications, I didn’t plan on loading the graphical user interface (GUI) for the operating system. In my case, I pulled out a Raspberry Pi A+. When starting a project like this, it is always a good idea to see what’s in the parts bin already. This completed photo booth keeps that old-time feel, while making digital photos available to guests just seconds after they are taken. The final result ( Figure 1) met all of these requirements and was surprisingly easy to build!įIGURE 1. Anyone who has planned a wedding knows the cost and time that goes into it, and this project could only excuse so much centerpiece duty.

The final two constraints were purely practical: It needed to be inexpensive and relatively quick to develop. To fit with the wedding and my general taste, it needed to have a vintage look and feel. It was unclear if Wi-Fi at the venue would be adequate, so photos would have to be stored locally with the option to post to social media, as well. The venue had very variable lighting and we didn’t want dark outlines as photos, so the photo booth would have to provide its own lighting. The particular occasion and venue posed a few additional challenges. A live preview of the photo was also essential so that nobody ended up headless in our album.

DSLR PHOTO BOOTH SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS SERIES

The photo booth should take a series of photos so people can try different props and poses.

DSLR PHOTO BOOTH SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS PORTABLE

It also needed to be portable since I currently live in Pennsylvania and the wedding was in Missouri. I needed an easy-to-use photo booth that could be set up by anyone in just a few minutes. The requirements I came up with for my project were simple. I wanted to make a digital photo booth that can store and tweet photos for guests. The earliest photo booths used traditional chemical developer techniques that were messy and hazardous, but luckily for me, digital cameras can now fill that role. Shortly after that, they began to show up on streets around the world before becoming a staple of shopping malls and ID card stations. It turns out that photo booths were conceptualized in the late 1800s and made a public debut at the World’s Fair in 1889. Photo booths are a lot of fun in fact, most of us can probably remember using them with friends or family and getting those small strips of pictures.

In classic style, an offhand comment about something turned into a few weekends of solder smoke, coffee, and coding. She had a table with some props and a cheap camera for people to use in mind, but it gave me an excuse to start a project and build a fully automated portable photo booth. My fiancée thought a photo booth would be a fun addition to our wedding reception.

Dslr photo booth software requirements