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Packing it together

A project log for E-paper instant camera

An instant camera where the "film" can be used again and again.

cameronCameron 02/09/2023 at 22:020 Comments

So I had a mess of cables and some code that could get a picture on to these damn NFC screens. The project was in principle finished, at least so I thought. I just needed to solder up a protoboard, print a body for it, and it would be done. Unfortunately I cant find the photos from when I did this in 2020, but the parts are still floating around in my many junk piles.

To get the ST demoboard to fit I had to saw off some parts and trim the longer header pins, but it worked well enough. I realised from this that the form factor of the ST board was really awkward if I wanted to do an actually nice looking body.

The ESP32 cam board was also awkward to fit, and headers made the whole thing much thicker than it needed to be. The 18650 battery fit nice on the handle side though.

The front of the camera was... underwhelming. The small lens on the ESP32 cam was definitely good enough for the job, but it really didn't look "camera like". My initial ideas of building something vaguely polaroid like in shape would be hard to realise.

The screen was held in physically, by sliding it into the back. On this crappy 3d print this was not so nice, and I realised another problem was then actually holding up the screen once you had a photo on it. The hefty switch on top would connect the battery power, and turn it off as well, which was not so great for the look either. The capture button on top had an LED though, and I was able to get the LED to light up to indicate if a picture was taken or when the camera was ready.

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