Modified Polaroid Uses Raspberry Pi and Thermal Printer for Instant B&W Images
The camera can save high-resolution color images for later, too.
There are a few Polaroid camera projects that make use of a thermal printer to pop out images in black and white, but most of them require the user to wait for a while before the image prints at insanely-low resolutions. Electrical engineering student Sam Zeloof, on the other hand, purposely designed one that can produce low-quality images almost instantaneously on thermal paper. At the same time, a high-resolution version is saved for later processing.
Zeloof designed his retrofitted Polaroid camera by removing the original hardware and installing a Wi-Fi-enabled Raspberry Pi Zero W, a Pi Camera module, and a thermal printer. He fashioned a spool out of a brass rod to hold the paper roll, which is held in place by magnets so they can be easily changed. Powering the camera is a pair of 3,000 milliampere-hour LiPo batteries that are wired in series to provide the 7 or 8V needed by the printer, while a step-down buck converter feeds the Pi the necessary 5.1V.
Zeloof maintained the use of the viewfinder and shutter button to snap images and even installed a speaker to play a “shutter” sound when a picture is taken. He also uses a Python image-manipulation library to add a yellow seven-segmented date stamp to a corner of the saved color image, which is sent via Wi-Fi to a PC or other device when he wants to produce high-quality prints.
Zeloof states that with some DIY projects, there is always some technical quirks, and never really user friendly, but his camera is simple enough that anyone can use it without issue.