Super8 Camera Brought To The Modern World

Certain styles of photography or videography immediately evoke an era. Black-and-white movies of flappers in bob cuts put us right in the roaring 20s, while a soft-focused, pastel heavy image with men in suits with narrow ties immediately ties us to the 60s. Similarly, a film shot at home with a Super 8 camera, with its coarse grain, punchy colors, and low resolution brings up immediate nostalgia from the 80s. These cameras are not at all uncommon in the modern era, but the cartridges themselves are definitely a bottleneck. [Nico Rahardian Tangara] retrofitted one with some modern technology that still preserves that 80s look.

The camera he’s using here is a Canon 514XL-S that was purchased for only $5, which is a very common price point for these obsolete machines, especially since this one wasn’t working. He removed all of the internal components except for a few necessary for the camera to work as if it still was using film, like the trigger mechanism to allow the camera to record. In the place of tape he’s installed a Raspberry Pi Zero 2W and a Camera Module 3, so this camera can record in high definition while retaining those qualities that make it look as if it’s filmed on an analog medium four decades ago.

[Nico] reports that the camera does faithfully recreate this early era of home video, and we’d agree as well. He’s been using it to document his own family in the present day, but the results he’s getting immediately recall Super 8 home movies from the 80s and early 90s. Raspberry Pis are almost purpose-built for the task of bringing older camera technology into the modern era, and they’re not just limited to video cameras either. This project put one into an SLR camera from a similar era.

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Digitally-Converted Leica Gets A 64-Megapixel Upgrade

Leica’s film cameras were hugely popular in the 20th century, and remain so with collectors to this day. [Michael Suguitan] has previously had great success converting his classic Leica into a digital one, and now he’s taken the project even further.

[Michael’s] previous work saw him create a so-called “digital back” for the Leica M2. He fitted the classic camera with a Raspberry Pi Zero and a small imaging sensor to effectively turn it into a digital camera, creating what he called the LeicaMPi. Since then, [Michael] has made a range of upgrades to create what he calls the LeicaM2Pi.

The upgrades start with the image sensor. This time around, instead of using a generic Raspberry Pi camera, he’s gone with the fancier ArduCam OwlSight sensor. Boasting a mighty 64 megapixels, it’s still largely compatible with all the same software tools as the first-party cameras, making it both capable and easy to use. With a  crop factor of 3.7x, the camera’s Voigtlander 12mm lens has a much more useful field of view.

Unlike [Michael’s] previous setup, there was also no need to remove the camera’s IR filter to clear the shutter mechanism. This means the new camera is capable of taking natural color photos during the day.  [Michael] also added a flash this time around, controlled by the GPIOs of the Raspberry Pi Zero. The camera also features a much tidier onboard battery via the PiSugar module, which can be easily recharged with a USB-C cable.

If you’ve ever thought about converting an old-school film camera into a digital shooter, [Michael’s] work might serve as a great jumping off point. We’ve seen it done with DSLRs, before, too! Video after the break.

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ZPUI Could Be Your Tiny Embedded GUI

One of the most frustrating things to me is looking at a freshly-flashed and just powered up single board computer. My goal with them is always getting to a shell – installing packages, driving GPIOs, testing my proof of concept code, adjusting the device tree to load peripheral drivers. Before I can do any of that, I need shell access, and getting there can be a real hassle.

Time after time, I’ve struggled trying to get to a shell on an SBC. For best results, you’d want to get yourself a keyboard, monitor, and an Ethernet cable. Don’t have those, or there’s no space to place them? Maybe a UART connection will work for you – unless it’s broken or misconfigured. Check your pinouts twice. Sure, nowadays you can put WiFi credentials into a text file in /boot/ – but good luck figuring out the IP address, or debugging any mistakes you might make formatting the file. Nowadays, Pi 4 and 5 expose a USB gadget connection on the USB-C port, and that helps… unless you’re already powering the Pi from that port. There’s really no shortage of failure modes here.

If you put a Pi on your network and it goes offline, you generally just don’t know what happened unless you reboot it, which can make debugging into a living hell. I’ve dealt with single-board computers mounted above fiberglass lifted ceilings, fleets of Pi boards at workshops I organized, pocket-carried Pi boards, and at some point, I got tired of it all. A hacker-aimed computer is meant to be accessible, not painful.

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ManiPylator focusing its laser pointer at a page.

Simulation And Motion Planning For 6DOF Robotic Arm

[Leo Goldstien] recently got in touch to let us know about a fascinating update he posted on the Hackaday.io page for ManiPylator — his 3D printed Six degrees of freedom, or 6DOF robotic arm.

This latest installment gives us a glimpse at what’s involved for command and control of such a device, as what goes into simulation and testing. Much of the requisite mathematics is introduced, along with a long list of links to further reading. The whole solution is based entirely on free and open source (FOSS) software, in fact a giant stack of such software including planning and simulation software on top of glue like MQTT message queues.

The practical exercise for this installment was to have the arm trace out the shape of a heart, given as a mathematical equation expressed in Python code, and it fared quite well. Measurements were taken! Science was done!

We last brought you word about this project in October of 2024. Since then, the project name has changed from “ManiPilator” to “ManiPylator”. Originally the name was a reference to the Raspberry Pi, but now the focus is on the Python programming language. But all the bot’s best friends just call him “Manny”.

If you want to get started with your own 6DOF robotic arm, [Leo] has traced out a path for you to follow. We’d love to hear about what you come up with!

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2025 Pet Hacks Contest: Keep The Prey At Bay With The Cat Valve

Some cats are what you might call indoor cats, happy to stretch out in the lap of indoor luxury and never bother themselves with the inclement outdoors again. Others however are fully in touch with their Inner Cat, and venture forth frequently in search of whatever prey they can find.

[Rkramer] has a cat of this nature,sadly one with a propensity for returning with live prey. To avoid this problem a solution is called for, and it comes in the shape of the Cat Valve, an automated cat door which enforces a buffer zone in their cellar to prevent unwanted gifts.

It’s a simple enough idea, when an IR sensor connected to a Raspberry Pi 4 detects the cat heading out into the world through the exterior cat flap, the computer fires up a motor connected to a lead screw which closes the flap between buffer zone and house. The cat then has the safety of the buffer zone, but can’t bring the prey fully inside.

If you’re a cat lover you’ll forgive them anything, but we have to admit to being on [Rkramer]’s side with this one. A useful way to keep the prey at bay is something we could have used a few times in the past, too. This project is part of the 2025 Pet Hacks contest. Done something similar for your cat? Why not make it an entry!

Fytó pet plant

2025 Pet Hacks Contest: Fytó – Turn Your Plant Into A Pet

This entry into the 2025 Pet Hacks Contest is about bringing some fun feedback to normally silent plants. Fytó integrates sensors and displays into a 3D printed planter. The sensors read the various environmental and soil conditions that the plant is experiencing, and give you feedback about them via a series of playful expressive faces that are displayed on the screen embedded in the planter.

At the core of the Fytó is a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W, which has plenty of power to display the animations while also being small enough to easily fit inside the planter without it growing in size much more than a normal planter would be. The sensors include a capacitive soil moisture sensor, a temperature sensor, and a light-dependent resistor. These sensors all provide analog outputs to relay their measurements and so there was an ADS1115 analog-to-digital converter board also included as the Raspberry Pi doesn’t have the required analog pins to communicate with them.

The fun animated faces are displayed with a 2-inch LCD display embedded in the planter. A small acrylic cover is placed in front of the LCD to help ease the transition from the printed planter to the internally mounted screen. The temperature and light sensors were also placed in openings around the planter to ensure they could get good environmental readings. There are six expressions the Fytó can express based on its sensor readings, ranging from happy when all the readings are in a good zone, to thirsty if it needs water or freezing when it’s too cold. Be sure to check out the other entries in the 2025 Pet Hacks Contest.

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Work, Eat, Sleep, Repeat: Become A Human Tamagotchi

When [Terence Grover] set out to build a Tamagotchi-inspired simulator, he didn’t just add a few modern tweaks. He ditched the entire concept and rebuilt it from the ground up. Forget cute wide-eyed blobby animals and pixel-poop. This Raspberry Pi-powered project ditches nostalgia in favour of brutal realism: inflation, burnout, capitalism, and the occasional existential crisis. Think Sims meets cyberpunk, rendered charmingly in Python on a low-res RGB LED matrix.

Instead of hunger and poop meters, this dystopian pet juggles Maslow’s hierarchy: hunger, rest, safety, social life, esteem, and money. Players make real-life-inspired decisions like working, socialising, and going into education – each affecting the stats in logical (and often unfair) ways. No free lunch here: food requires money, money requires mind-numbing labour, and labour tanks your rest. You can even die of overwork à la Amazon warehouse. The UI and animation logic are all hand-coded, and there’s a working buzzer, pixel-perfect sprite movement, and even mini-games to simulate job repetition.

It’s equal parts social commentary and pixel art fever dream. While we have covered Tamagotchi recreations some time ago, this one makes you the needy survivor. Want your own dystopia in 64×32? Head over to [Terence Grover]’s Github and fork the full open source code. We’ll be watching. The Tamagotchi certainly is.

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