I love the Raspberry Pi computer. It’s only 35 bucks and it’s been the centerpiece for projects like my Mini Arcade Cabinet. I have a tendency to grab one when they go on sale or I start planning another project. Plus the recently came out with a new version, so long story short – I have three Pis and I’ve been looking for something to make with them. Enter the Twin Cities Live Photo Booth.
I have seen variations of this project online. Some are very elaborate, with custom cases while others were basically some cables and components in a box. I wanted something that would look quirky and fun but be extremely user-friendly. The photo booth was to be set up in our audience room for Twin Cities Live and I would not be able to monitor it.
I found an EXCELLENT tutorial here that was exactly what I needed. Seriously, I can’t thank Drumminhands Design enough for providing some outstanding instructions. I had a few of these items already in the house, but here’s my shopping list:
- Raspberry Pi Model B+
- Pi Case
- 32 GB SD Card (a smaller one would work)
- WiFi Dongle
- Raspberry Pi Camera Module
- Camera Extension Cable
- 7 inch Tontec HDMI Monitor
- GPIO Cables
- Breadboard
- Wireless Mini Keyboard
- Speaker Stand
- Resistors
- LED Lights
- Massive Arcade Button
- Misc Wires
My father designed and built the case. We were inspired by the black and silver metal look of vintage cameras from the 1950s. The Pi camera itself is really small, but I wanted it to have a big camera look to it, so the silver “lens” is actually a metal insert for a stovetop burner.
Following the Drumminhands instructions, I purchased the materials and got everything wired up.
One of the neat things about the Raspberry Pi is that not only can you run a Windows-like operating system on it (in this case, a Linux distro called Raspbian), but there are a series of pins on the board that you can connect inputs and outputs too. Then you can write a program that can use those pins, so it’s relatively easy to wire up things like physical buttons. Again, Drumminhands did the hard work. I just downloaded his files and rewrote things to fit my needs. I also created some custom graphics too to match our Twin Cities Live branding.
After a lot of testing and a few frustrations with the Raspberry Pi in general, I got everything working. I used a breadboard to test all of the inputs. Drumminhands suggested soldering the wires into a permanent board but honestly, it was working as is and I decided not to tempt fate so I put the prototyping board in the final unit. If it ain’t broke…
There are a lot of wires there, but in the simplest terms, what’s basically happening is that you hit the big red button which starts the program. The 4 LEDs are fired in sequence. The first is for the first pose, the camera takes a picture, and then the second flashes 3 times to change poses for a total of four pictures. Then the program turns those 4 photos into an animated GIF, uploads that to a Tumblr account and then resets itself for the next round of pictures. I wired up a simple lamp to light the scene instead of trying to deal with a flash. That’s not impossible to do, but in the interest of simplicity, I decided against it. I also had to extend all of the LEDs and the buttons with wiring to get them into position on the case. Every 6 months or so, the soldering skills come in handy.
So here it is all finished and installed at the TCL studio! On the first day of use it was already a big hit. You can view the pictures at the TCL Tumblr account here. We’ll fire it up during every audience day (every Friday and other random days throughout the year) so keep checking back to see more!
