Raspberry PI : developing a lightscape application

Abstract

Digital cameras, especially DSLR cameras, have the ability to be remotely controlled by external devices. Photography, has also been gaining the interest of many over the pass few years. With the release of the Raspberry Pi, a portable and cost-effective solution to control DSLR cameras can now be developed.

Newly taken images from digital cameras can instantly be displayed or save into any computer. These images can further be processed using many of the images processing software available in the market. However, there are many other creative ways and things for camera hobbyist to experiment or actually do in order to create interesting images and effects, thus making this hobby more interesting.

The project aims to develop a lightscape application, which consist of a web server, housed within a Raspberry Pi to display or portrait an image on a moving robot. To achieve a form of wireless communication between the Raspberry Pi and the robot, the Raspberry Pi had to be configured as an access point. On the hardware side, an Arduino, a microcontroller designed for simple and small applications, controlled the robot. The communication between the two devices was made possible using UDP (User Datagram Protocol) transmission, which would transmit the images.

By the end of the project, a workable lightscape application, capable of sending images from the Raspberry Pi over to the robot to be portrait, was produced. Features of the application include the ability to select a path from a list of robot paths, upload an image as well as select an image from a list of images. Future work can be done to implement new features and improve the overall efficiency and stability of the application.