The
Game Boy Camera is available right now for fifty bucks. It can take and
store 30 black and white images, and has an impressive collection of fun
image manipulation tools. Images can be flipped, mirrored, and stretched.
You can draw on them, or stamp them with a wide variety of clip art and
fonts. You can combine four images to make a wide (or tall) panorama. And
you can set it up to do time lapse with interval adjustable from 1 second
to 1 hour. You can combine images to make a montage or animation. You can
add notation to each image. And you can put your face onto a game character
in three included games. You can print out your creations using an accessory
printer, or transfer them to another game boy (equipped with the camera)
using a serial link cable. There's even a music editor which allows you
to compose your own music. And all this is done the way Nintendo does things:
it's fun and funky. Every screen has a different musical theme (you can
choose from 30 different musical backgrounds to accompany you animation).
And there are all kinds of weird graphics for each sub-menu.
Click here for specs on the artificial retina chip , provided by Benjamin Green.
The camera itself is quite sensitive and can create a good image
in low light. It can even detect infrared, and take a picture by
the (IR)light of a TV remote. Again, hmmm...
Even if we don't chop the thing up, it is still hackable, by figuring
out the protocol for image transfer. Then you could upload images to be
printed or put up on web pages, maybe even aimated GIFs! Once more, hmmm...
More info is available on transfering GB images via a cartridge reader on Jeff Frohwein's GameBoy Site
Download GB camera images to your pc using a Game Boy Link cable and Pocket Printer Emulator
What does this have to do with Game Boy Camera? Nothing. But I received a number of inquiries about using the GB camera (or its sensor) for robot vision or astrophotography. The QuickCam is just as cheap, already interfaced to a parallel port, and documented. But we need to keep digging and find out as much as we can about the GB Camera.
This GameBoy
Development Ring site is owned by Corky Mork. Want to join the GameBoy Development Ring? |
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