Hogwarts portraits belong to the magical realm of Harry Potter and obviously, it is not real and personally, I don’t see it happening anytime soon. No, wait. Maybe it will, like Minority Report has shown us and the Instagif DIY Instant GIF Camera by avid maker Abhishek Singh could be the start. Abhishek has created a Polaroid camera equivalent that, instead of still images, outputs animated GIF. I know right. It sounded rather magical, however, don’t expect Harry Potter kind of enchantment of moving and talking portraits or moving images on newspapers from this DIY contraption. The technology is not there yet. But still, this is one step up the real-life Hogwarts portrait we saw a while back since you will not need a smartphone to make the image come alive.
With Abhishek’s creation this Polaroid-inspired camera records footage and ‘prints’ on a rather thick-ish cartridge (think NES cartridges). The cartridge is outfitted with a digital screen that will display the animated GIF converted from the short clip. Like I said, it is far from paper-thin and it is also power-dependent. This means, not only the camera requires battery power, but the cartridge too. The camera designed by Abhishek and built from scratch with Raspberry-Pi, along with Node.js and Fusion360. Obviously, to build one, it will require some technical knowledge and coding skills. But if you think you have what it takes to cobble one together, then you can do the same by following Abhishek’s instruction found HERE to make your own Instagif DIY Instant GIF Camera.
Images: Abhishek Singh.
via Oh Gizmo!
