Karmmah's 3D-Printed Pocket Camera Project Gets a Speed Boost From a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W

Pseudonymous maker "Karmmah" has released 3D print files designed to turn a Raspberry Pi Zero form-factor single-board computer and camera module into a point-and-shoot pocket camera — after upgrading a prototype to the new Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W.

"I just swapped a [Raspberry] Pi Zero 2 into it and it already makes it a lot nicer to use," Karmmah writes, referring to the recently-launched quad-core upgrade to the Raspberry Pi Zero family which offers a dramatic improvement in both single-core and multithreaded performance. "The camera uses the Pi Zero 2 WH, HQ Camera Module and a Waveshare LCD HAT that has a display and some buttons for control."

The 3D-printed housing is designed to mimic a compact camera, and provides a place to attach a physical shutter button which triggers a Python script for capturing images. There isn't, however, any internal power source: "It's powered by an external powerbank," Karmmah explains, "but I'm thinking about ways to integrate a battery into the case."

Moving to the new Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W was easy enough, given it mimics the size and layout of its predecessors, and has brought with it noticeable improvements.

"The boot was much faster and also launching the Python script that I use for capturing was finally quite quick," Karmmah writes. "I also think capturing was faster, but the script is still quite basic, so it's not that hard to run. In general the feel with the old one was just really slow and the new let's you do stuff much quicker."

More details are available in the project's Reddit thread, while the 3D printable housing files have been published to Thingiverse under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial license.