Tiny Polapi-Zero

By Lucy Hattersley. Posted

While this a little different from your classic instant camera, it remains functionally the same and it’s honestly a lot cooler as well. A thermal printer – the kind you’d find for printing receipts – prints photos captured by a Raspberry Pi camera. It even has a live view to line up shots.

01: Print

This project uses a custom 3D-printed camera chassis that works using the exact parts listed. It will fit the classic Raspberry Pi Camera Module, the buttons, and the screen, as well as a Raspberry Pi Zero to power it all.

02: Download and install

The creator, Pierre Muth, has done some great programming and image processing for this build so that the dithering of the black and white pixels looks more coherent on the final printed photo. You’ll need to download the code to make it work this well.

03:  Assemble

Once you’re done testing, carefully squeeze everything into the chassis and give it a charge. You’re now ready to go out and take some weird and wonderful photos.

Materials

  • Nano Thermal Receipt Printer – TTL Serial

  • Sharp Memory LCD LS027B7DH01A

  • Raspberry Pi Camera Module

  • 6 × buttons

  • 3D-printed case

  • 5 A 3 A voltage regulator

  • 2S 7.2 V battery

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