News: Analog Video Cam + Thermal Printer = Slowest Instant Camera Ever

Analog Video Cam + Thermal Printer = Slowest Instant Camera Ever

Sometimes an "analog" result is highly satisfying when the means for producing it is just the opposite. Enter Niklas Roy's "Electronic Instant Camera" project. The endeavor combines an analog black and white videocamera with a thermal receipt printer. The outcome is something in between a Polaroid camera and a digital camera. Like the olden days, the subject must sit still for a quite a while—3 full minutes—as their image is recorded and printed directly on a roll of receipt paper.

Roy reports that an ATmega8 microcontroller connects the camera and printer, a microcontroller incapable of storing a complete "videoimage" in its 1KB SRAM—meaning: "the camera really has to forget the content of each line after it printed it on paper – in order to have enough space for capturing the next line."

AVR-GCC source code available here. More images below the video.

Analog Video Cam + Thermal Printer = Slowest Instant Camera Ever

Analog Video Cam + Thermal Printer = Slowest Instant Camera Ever

Analog Video Cam + Thermal Printer = Slowest Instant Camera Ever


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1 Comment

Anybody remember when you could get a b&w camera and thermal printer to put on a gameboy? I had one!

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