These days, you get a fantastic camera with the purchase of just about any modern smartphone. [Abe] missed some of the charm of earlier, lower-quality digital cameras, though, and wanted to recreate that experience. The way forward was obvious. He built a nostalgic digital video camera from scratch!
[Abe] figured he could build the entire project around analog gear, and then simply find a way to store the video digitally, thus creating the effect he was looking for. To that end, the build is based around a small analog video camera that’s intended for use with FPV drones. It runs on 5 to 20 volts and outputs a simple composite video signal. This makes it easy to display its output on a small LCD screen, originally intended to be used with an automotive reversing camera. These were both paired with a mini video recorder module from RunCam, which can capture composite video and store it on a microSD card in 640 x 480 resolution.
These parts were quickly lashed together, with the camera sending its output to the RunCam video recorder module, which then passed it on to the screen. Everything worked as expected, so [Abe] moved on to implementing an on-screen display using the MAX7456 chip, which is built specifically for this purpose. It overlays text on the video feed to the screen as commanded by an RP2040 microcontroller. Once that was all working, [Abe] just had to provide a battery power supply and wrap everything up in a nice retro-styled case. Then, at the last minute, the separate camera and recorder modules were replaced by a TurboWing module that combined both into one.
The result is a nifty-looking camera that produces grainy, slurry, old-school digital video. If you love 640 x 480 as a resolution, you’ll dig this. It’s got strong 90s camcorder vibes, and that’s a very good thing.
We love a good custom camera around these parts, especially those that offer deliciously high resolution. If you’re building your own, be sure to let us know. Video after the break.
heh….to launch off on a tangent…there was indeed an era of shockingly bad digital cameras but in the last few years before the iphone, cheap digital cameras were much better than most phones today. Just saying, as someone whose hands shake, i got much better photos in indoor lighting with a 2009ish Canon Digital Elph “Ixus” camera than with most of the phones I’ve had. I figure this is mostly due to larger pixels on the sensor itself, but i imagine the longer light path might also give some advantages that just can’t be replicated in a phone that’s only about 8mm thick at the camera bulge.
The asterisk in there after fantastic should read “for a CCD the size of a gnats whisker”. There’s no amount of multi picture compositing that’ll make up for that.
That was a very fun watch. I’m a complete noob when it comes to designing physical objects, so it was really interesting to see his process.