Optocam Zero: a Pi Zero based digital camera made using off the shelf components

Fwirt•about 1 hour ago

It's a shame that, being based on a full-blown Linux SBPC, it has an absolutely unacceptable boot time for a camera. 22 seconds. I can have my iPhone camera out and ready to capture an ephemeral moment of child's play in under 3 seconds, most commercial cameras boot in seconds as well. A film camera can be ready to go the second the lens cap is off. 22 seconds is an eternity in the world of photography. It's a shame that the SoC the Raspberry Pi line is based on has no kernel support (or IIRC hardware support) for S3 or anything similar.

luqtas•16 minutes ago

i built my own camera out of a Zero 2W (happort.org/camera) and by disabling Picam2 and letting the OS (Debian Bullseye) idle, i can get 2 days of shots and some videos while i walk around the city/hiking out of 3 18650 batteries... bringing 3 spare batteries in my backpack never put me needing battery in any situation! starting Picam2 takes a fraction of a second

ktpsns•21 minutes ago

It's unfair to compare an idling deep sleep device with a cold boot.

However, there is a shortcut: Just don't boot a full OS (thinking of custom firmware which boots in fractions of seconds, standard in the Microcontroller world). Or boot an optimized Linux user space. I am confident with a bit fiddling one can bring down a standard SBC Linux to a few seconds from cold to ready.

serf•18 minutes ago

you can get a zero booting under 10 seconds fairly reliably.

still slower than a hot phone with an app, but it's faster than 22s.

fellowmartian•29 minutes ago

It’s possible to boot Linux in seconds, it’d just be a terrible developer experience.

e12e•33 minutes ago

Not from off state, though? Granted I still expect the iphone to boot quicker than 20 seconds.

serf•19 minutes ago

yeah it's pretty fair if you compare them apples to apples.

an iphone boots in 15-20s depending on how stale things are, you'll presumably need to unlock it, and then navigate to the camera app however you do so.

it's just presumed you wont have to boot your phone.

poolnoodle•42 minutes ago

The photos aren't half bad. I was expecting something along the lines of the first cameras on mobile phones.

Shalomboy•about 1 hour ago

I loved this project the first time it came around. As much as I wanted to build it out myself, I was shocked at how much the components actually cost to put together. It definitely seems like an improvement on the charmera though, so it all comes out in the wash.

robot_jesus•14 minutes ago

I was looking around but either I missed it or it’s not spelled out. Do you recall a ballpark cost for the components? I didn't feel like individually pricing out the many components.

Optocam Zero: a Pi Zero based digital camera made using off the shelf components

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