Skip to main content

Start your own digital camera manufacturing business with this Raspberry Pi tutorial

Technology has gotten so easy. Gone are the days when you had to solder stuff together, learn BASIC or DOS prompts, change a video card – if you don’t get any of those references, you’re way too young or we’re way too old. Anyway, part of the fun and frustration of tech of yore was that you learned how the stuff worked by having to do put some DIY muscle into it. Nowadays, when a smartphone or laptop gets too slow, you’d chuck it and get a new one. If you like to put together or take apart tech – specifically a digital camera – Phillip Burgess from Adafruit shows you how you can build a touchscreen digicam using Raspberry Pi and a few components in this video tutorial.

The setup requires a Raspberry Pi motherboard, camera module, USB battery pack, and Adafruit touchscreen module. Burgess provides instructions on how to connect it all together, and it does require some soldering (get that Radio Shack soldering gun out of the attic). Add in a Wi-Fi adapter and you can have images automatically uploaded to a Dropbox account. Other options include adding an infrared board for low-light shooting, self-timer, motion detection, etc.

Recommended Videos

Check out the first video below, and click here to find out about this DIY camera and everything you need to make one. Of course, our headline is tongue-in-cheek and it’s not a practical camera like the ones you buy off the shelf, but it’s a fun weekend project and you can join the many who are doing some cool stuff with Raspberry Pi. The project will set you back around $126.

If you actually do want to get into digital camera manufacturing, you can learn how to build a fully enclosed point-and-shoot Raspberry Pi camera with the second video from James Wolf.

(Via The Phoblographer/Imaging Resource)

Les Shu
Former Digital Trends Contributor
I am formerly a senior editor at Digital Trends. I bring with me more than a decade of tech and lifestyle journalism…
This is what happens ‘when you get two uber-geeks in space at the same time’
NASA's Don Pettit on the space station.



During NASA’s first-ever Twitch livestream from the International Space Station (ISS) on Wednesday, current station inhabitant Don Pettit and recent returnee Matthew Dominick talked about what it’s like to live and work in a satellite 250 miles up.

Read more
The GoPro Hero 13 Creator Edition is $100 off, but not for long
A person holding the GoPro HERO13 Creator Edition in front of the ocean.

Outdoor enthusiasts who want to buy a new action camera should go for the brand that popularized the product and look for GoPro deals. Best Buy has an offer that's going to be hard to refuse, as it features the GoPro Hero 13 Creator Edition. From its original price of $600, it's down to just $500 as part of the retailer's Presidents' Day Sale. There are still a few days remaining before the $100 discount ends on February 17, but we highly recommend completing your purchase as soon as possible because stocks may run out before then.

Why you should buy the GoPro Hero 13 Creator Edition
The star of the GoPro Hero 13 Creator Edition is the GoPro Hero 13 Black, which is the latest version of the brand's popular line of action cameras. It's capable of recording video at up to 5.3K resolution, and you can grab photos of up to 24.7MP from your footage using the GoPro Quick app. The GoPro Hero 13 Black can also take videos that are slowed down by 13 times the normal speed, and it can last more than 5 hours on a single charge. The front and rear LCD screens will let you frame your shots perfectly, and the built-in buttons enable easy controls for lengthy sessions.

Read more
ISS astronaut shares epic photo of a ‘starry starry night’
Don Pettit's 'starry starry night' image captured from the space station.

 

Don Pettit's been snapping away in orbit again. This time, the NASA astronaut has captured a stunning image of the Milky Way from the International Space Station (ISS) . It also features Earth and city lights some 250 miles below the orbital outpost.

Read more