making animated GIF is the ‘in’ thing today and though the concept of animated GIF is simple, the process of making it is anything but. that’s no biggie cos’ it’s not like you can’t live without it, but what if there is a fun and easy way to animate GIF your life’s images? if ‘why not’ is at the back of your mind, then the OTTO Raspberry Pi-powered Customizable Camera is the imaging device for you. apart from its, funky, almost toy-life design, it is a pretty capable camera which is also hackable (we will come to that later). the star feature, or at least one of the star feature, is obviously the ability to let you create animated GIF and you do so by rotating a hand-crank that resembles the film rewind crank found on an analog camera and, well, that’s about it.
your work of art is then automatically sync over WiFi with the companion app where you can choose to automatically share it with the people that matters to you. with the companion app, you can also choose other ‘modes’ of photography, such as animated GIF, time-lapse, photo booth tricks and filters, or user-generated modes available through a community library. for geeks, you’d be glad to know that OTTO is also the first commercially available product that’s built on Raspberry Pi, which means this little guy is totally hackable by virtually anyone with the interest to do so. it has a USB plug that supports external hardware such as the Arduino-powered FlashyFlash that lets you do things like high-five triggered shots, embedded the loudness into a GIF of a concert and more. basically, with Raspberry Pi and Arduino, the possibilities are endless.
other hardware details include FlashyFlash shoe, a 96×96 pixel OLED display for reviewing photos, MIL-spec shutter button (!), 3-zone manual focus boasting 35mm f2.0 lens, a micro USB host port, and of course, the hand crank. all these for just $199 a pop, available if you back it up on its Kickstarter campaign. affordable it is, but do not expect this to be the digital camera like you are accustomed with; it is more like a digitalized Lomo.
