The pibooth project provides a photobooth application out-of-the-box in pure Python for Raspberry Pi. Have a look to the wiki to discover some realizations from GitHub users, and don't hesitate to send us photos of your version.

Note

Even if designed for a Raspberry Pi, this software may be installed on any Unix/Linux based OS (tested on Ubuntu 16 and Mac OSX 10.14.6).

Contents

• Features
• Gallery
• Requirements
  • Hardware
  • Software
• Install
• Run
  • States and lights management
  • Commands
  • Final picture rendering
• Configuration
  • Customize using plugins
  • GUI translations
  • Printer
• Circuit diagram
• Terms and conditions
  • GDPR advices
  • Credits
• Support us on Beerpay

Features

• Interface available in Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Hungarian, Norwegian and Spanish (customizable)
• Capture from 1 to 4 photos and concatenate them in a final picture
• Support all cameras compatible with gPhoto2, OpenCV and Raspberry Pi
• Support for hardware buttons and lamps on Raspberry Pi GPIO
• Fully driven from hardware buttons / keyboard / mouse / touchscreen
• Auto-start at the Raspberry Pi startup
• Animate captures from the last sequence during idle time
• Store final pictures and the individual captures
• Printing final pictures using CUPS server (printing queue indication)
• Custom texts can be added on the final picture (customizable fonts, colors, alignments)
• Custom background(s) and overlay(s) can be added on the final picture
• All settings available in a configuration file (most common options in a graphical interface)
• Highly customizable thanks to its plugin system, you can develop your own plugin

Gallery

You can see some examples of the output picture formats you can get with pibooth on the following page.

Requirements

The requirements listed below are the ones used for the development of pibooth, but other configuration may work fine. All hardware buttons, lights and printer are optional, the application can be entirely controlled using a keyboard, a mouse or a touchscreen.

Warning

Using a Pi Camera, the preview is visible only on a screen connected to the HDMI or DSI connectors (the preview is an overlay managed at GPU low level). It also means that pibooth can not be started throught SSH tuneling. Even with X11 forwarding enabled (ssh -X ...) the preview will not be visible.

Hardware

• 1 Raspberry Pi 3 Model B (or higher)
• 1 Camera (Raspberry Pi Camera v2.1 8 MP 1080p or any DSLR camera compatible with gPhoto2 or any webcam compatible with OpenCV )
• 2 push buttons
• 2 LEDs
• 2 resistors of 100 Ohm
• 1 printer

Software

• Raspberry Pi OS with desktop
• Python 3.7.3
• libsdl2 2.0
• libgphoto2 2.5.27
• libcups 2.2.10

Install

A brief description on how to set-up a Raspberry Pi to use this software.

1. Download the Raspbian image and set-up an SD-card. You can follow these instructions.

2. Insert the SD-card into the Raspberry Pi and fire it up. Use the raspi-config tool to configure your system (e.g., expand partition, change hostname, password, enable SSH, configure to boot into GUI, etc.).

   Hint

   Don't forget to enable the camera in raspi-config.

3. Upgrade all installed software:

   $ sudo apt-get update
   $ sudo apt-get full-upgrade
   

4. Install SDL2 (and extras) which is required by pygame 2+:

   $ sudo apt-get install libsdl2-*
   

5. Optionally install the last stable gPhoto2 version (required only for DSLR camera):

   $ sudo wget raw.github.com/gonzalo/gphoto2-updater/master/gphoto2-updater.sh
   $ sudo chmod 755 gphoto2-updater.sh
   $ sudo ./gphoto2-updater.sh
   

6. Optionally install CUPS to handle printers (more instructions to add a new printer can be found here):

   $ sudo apt-get install cups libcups2-dev
   

7. Optionally install OpenCV to improve images generation efficiency or if a Webcam is used:

   $ sudo apt-get install python3-opencv
   

8. Install pibooth from the pypi repository:

   $ sudo pip3 install pibooth[dslr,printer]
   

   Hint

   If you don't have gPhoto2 and/or CUPS installed (steps 5. and/or 6. skipped), remove printer or dslr under the []

Note

An editable/customizable version of pibooth can be installed by following these instructions . Be aware that the code on the master branch may be unstable.

Run

Start the photobooth application using the command:

$ pibooth

All pictures taken are stored in the folder defined in [GENERAL][directory]. They are named YYYY-mm-dd-hh-mm-ss_pibooth.jpg which is the time when first capture of the sequence was taken. A subfolder raw/YYYY-mm-dd-hh-mm-ss is created to store the single raw captures.

Note

if you have both Pi and DSLR cameras connected to the Raspberry Pi, both are used, this is called the Hybrid mode. The preview is taken using the Pi one for a better video rendering and the capture is taken using the DSLR one for better picture rendering.

You can display a basic help on application options by using the command:

$ pibooth --help

States and lights management

The application follows the states sequence defined in the simplified diagram below:

The states of the LED 1 and LED 2 are modified depending on the actions available for the user.

Detailed state diagram can be found on this page.

Commands

After the graphical interface is started, the following actions are available:

Action	Keyboard key	Physical button	Touch event
Toggle Full screen	Ctrl + F	-	-
Choose layout	LEFT or RIGHT	Button 1 or Button 2	Tap 1 finger
Take pictures	P	Button 1	Tap 1 finger
Export Printer/Cloud	Ctrl + E	Button 2	Tap 1 finger
Open/close settings	ESC	Button 1 + Button 2	Tap 4 finger
Select option	UP or DOWN	Button 1	Tap 1 finger
Change option value	LEFT or RIGHT	Button 2	Tap 1 finger

Final picture rendering

The pibooth application handle the rendering of the final picture using 2 variables defined in the configuration (see Configuration below):

• [CAMERA][resolution] = (width, height) is the resolution of the captured picture in pixels. As explained in the configuration file, the preview size is directly dependent from this parameter.
• [PICTURE][orientation] = auto/landscape/portrait is the orientation of the final picture (after concatenation of all captures). If the value is auto, the orientation is automatically chosen depending on the resolution.

Note

The resolution is an important parameter, it is responsible for the quality of the final picture. Have a look to picamera possible resolutions .

Image effects can be applied on the capture using the [PICTURE][effect] variable defined in the configuration.

[PICTURE]

# Effect applied on all captures
captures_effects = film

Instead of one effect name, a list of names can be provided. In this case, the effects are applied sequentially on the captures sequence.

[PICTURE]

# Define a rolling sequence of effects. For each capture the corresponding effect is applied.
captures_effects = ('film', 'cartoon', 'washedout', 'film')

Have a look to the predefined effects available depending on the camera used:

• picamera effects
• gPhoto2 effects (PIL based)

Texts can be defined by setting the option [PICTURE][footer_text1] and [PICTURE][footer_text2] (lets them empty to hide any text). For each one, the font, the color and the alignment can be chosen. For instance:

[PICTURE]

# Same font applied on footer_text1 and footer_text2
text_fonts = Amatic-Bold

This key can also take two names or TTF file paths:

[PICTURE]

# 'arial' font applied on footer_text1, 'Roboto-BoldItalic' font on footer_text2
text_fonts = ('arial', 'Roboto-BoldItalic')

The available fonts can be listed using the following the command:

$ pibooth --fonts

To regenerate the final pictures afterwards, from the originals captures present in the raw folder, use the command:

$ pibooth-regen

It permits to adjust the configuration to enhance the previous pictures with better parameters (title, more effects, etc...)

Configuration

At the first run, a configuration file is generated in ~/.config/pibooth/pibooth.cfg by default. This file permits to configure the behavior of the application.

A quick configuration GUI menu (see Commands ) gives access to the most common options:

More options are available by editing the configuration file which is easily done using the command:

$ pibooth --config

The default configuration can be restored with the command (strongly recommended when upgrading pibooth):

$ pibooth --reset

The configuration directory can be chosen at startup. This feature gives the possibility to keep several configurations on the same Raspberry Pi and quickly switch from one configuration to another. The following command will start pibooth using configuration files from myconfig1/ directory:

$ pibooth myconfig1/

See the default configuration file for further details.

Customize using plugins

Several plugins maintained by the community are available. They add extra features to pibooth. Have a look to the plugins on PyPI.

You can also easily develop your own plugin, and declare it in the [GENERAL][plugins] key of the configuration. See guidelines to develop custom plugin.

GUI translations

The graphical interface texts are available in 8 languages by default: Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Hungarian, Norwegian and Spanish. The default translations can be easily edited using the command:

$ pibooth --translate

A new language can be added by adding a new section ([alpha-2-code]). If you want to have pibooth in your language feel free to send us the corresponding keywords via a GitHub issue.

Printer

The print button (see Commands) and print states are automatically activated/shown if:

• pycups and pycups-notify are installed
• at least one printer is configured in CUPS
• the key [PRINTER][printer_name] is equal to default or an existing printer name

To avoid paper waste, set the option [PRINTER][max_duplicates] to the maximum of identical pictures that can be sent to the printer.

Set the option [PRINTER][max_pages] to the number of paper sheets available on the printer. When this number is reached, the print function will be disabled and an icon indicates the printer failure. To reset the counter, open then close the settings graphical interface (see Commands).

Here is the default configuration used for this project in CUPS, it may depend on the printer used:

Options	Value
Media Size	10cm x 15cm
Color Model	CMYK
Media Type	Glossy Photo Paper
Resolution	Automatic
2-Sided Printing	Off
Shrink page ...	Shrink (print the whole page)

Circuit diagram

Here is the diagram for hardware connections. Please refer to the default configuration file to know the default pins used (physical pin numbering).

An extra button can be added to start and shutdown properly the Raspberry Pi. Edit the file /boot/config.txt and set the line:

dtoverlay=gpio-shutdown

Then connect a push button between physical pin 5 and pin 6.

Terms and conditions

See the LICENSE file to have details on the terms and coniditions.

GDPR advices

pibooth was developed for a private usage with no connection to a professional or commercial activity, as a consequence GDPR does not apply. However if you are using photobooth in Europe, it is your responsability to check that your usage and more particularly the usage of the pictures generated by pibooth follows the GDPR rules, especially make sure that the people that will use the pibooth are aware that the image will be stored on the device.

Credits

Pibooth icon from Artcore Illustrations

Icons from the Noun Project (https://thenounproject.com/)

• Polaroid by icon 54
• Up hand drawn arrow by Kid A
• Cameraman and Friends Posing For Camera by Gan Khoon Lay
• Camera by Alfa Design
• Print Photo by Kmg Design
• Pointer hand by Peter van Driel

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