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PD-Camera project App

PD-Camera is an unofficial, experimental accessory for Panic Inc.'s Playdate handheld console, which as the name hopefully suggests allows the device to record pictures as well as animated gifs, in whopping 1-bit color and QVGA (320x240) resolution. Kind of similar to the 1998 accessory for that other monochrome handheld device (which has 2-bit color and fewer pixels).

This repository contains the Lua+C app that runs on the Playdate itself. The hardware and firmware of the PD-Camera accessory it works with can be found here.

Here's a one minute intro video (click to watch).

Watch the project's trailer video on YouTube

And a four minute demo that was part of Tiny Yellow Machine's Playdate Community Direct. Goes a bit more into details and shows video recording (click to watch).

Longer demo introducing video feature, as part of the TYM Community Direct

Disclaimer

This project is

  • not affiliated with nor endorsed by Panic Inc.,
  • highly experimental,
  • very hacky,
    • oh so hacky.

While I crashed my own Playdate countless times working on this, and it has survived so far, I cannot be held responsible for any damage, data loss, bad selfie, pandemic, etc. that might occur to you while playing with this project. Use this at your own risk. Thanks ❤️.

How does it work? Why does it exist?

For more context on how this project came to be, you can find its devlog on Playdate's Dev forum and a deep dive into how it all works here.

Or read on for installation instructions.

Installation

If you don't want to modify the source, you can directly grab a prebuilt pdx.zip file from the repository's releases and sideload it on your Playdate. Otherwise, read on to build your own.

Note: the app can run in the Simulator but that won't get you very far, as it is not compatible with the hardware of this project.

Building

This is a C + Lua "game", which means you'll need to set up your IDE to build C for Playdate by following the instructions here. There are a lot of prerequisites, please follow the doc carefully (and try the dev forum if you need help).

You can then use the CMakeLists.txt to build and make the app. The file is based on the SDK examples. I worked with VS Code on Windows and NMake.

Usage

The app has only 3 screens:

  • home where there isn't much to do but to choose betwen the other 2
  • viewfinder where you get the live feed from the camera, and can play with the image settings, snap photos and record "videos" (or more accurately, animated gifs)
  • camera roll is a simple viewer in which you can browse through your captures, display their time stamp, and delete them

Getting started

Connect the PD Camera hardware addon to your Playdate and turn it on. Then wake the Playdate and start the Camera app.

Home screen

Home screen

In the home screen,

  • If the camera device is detected, pressing Ⓐ will enter viewfinder mode.

    Note: if the camera is not detected, try unplugging, restarting the app, or power cycling the teensy (fastest option).

  • Pressing Ⓑ will open the camera roll.

In any other screen, pressing Ⓑ will return to the home. It is recommended not to leave the viewfinder on for long stretches (see known issues). Use it when you're ready to snap!

Menus in this app

Both viewfinder and camera roll use the same menu system, a column on the left side of the screen that uses the remaining 80 pixels not taken by the 320x240 QVGA images the camera produces. Menus are 2-dimensional and work exclusively with the ✛ dpad:

  • ⬅️ and ➡️ to cycle through sections.
  • ⬆️ and ⬇️, when available, to toggle between options of the current section. There is no validation necessary.

Viewfinder mode

Explore the different section of the menus, they should hopefully be self explanatory, especially with real time feedback on the viewfinder image.

At any time:

  • pressing Ⓐ takes a picture with the current settings.
  • pressing Ⓑ will return to the home.

To record a video, use left or right to reach the VIDEO MODE section, then up or down to select On. A new bar will appear at the top to confirm that. You can now play with the other menu sections or crank and keep cranking to record a movie (like an old mechanical camera!).

Note: if you'd rather not have to use the crank to record videos, an alternative input method is available: press and hold Ⓐ. You can enable this via a checkbox in the Playdate system menu.

Recording an animation

When the maximum duration is reached or if you stop cranking, the app will start processing the data and save a .gif file in your data folder (see retreiving media).

Processing the gif

The VIDEO PALETTE section (only available when VIDEO MODE is On) allows you to choose from different palette presets for the generated gif. It's still 2 color, but if you feel like trying something else than black & white, you can. This feature is only available in video mode and you obviously won't be able to admire the result on your Playdate directly.

Screenshot of the video palette menu

Camera roll

The menu in this screen displays small thumbnails of your media.

Screenshot of Camera roll screen

Videos are represented with 2 columns of holes, as in an actual film strip (and the preview is a still of the first frame of the video).

Alt text

At any time:

  • pressing Ⓑ will return to the home.

In the DELETE section, pressing Ⓐ will delete the currently displayed photo or video (permanently, cannot be undone).

Deleting a picture

Retrieving media

To export your media, plug your Playdate to a computer and reboot to Data Disk (see here if you don't know how).

Then navigate to Data/com.t0m.camera/ if you installed the app manually, or Data/user.XXXXX.com.t0m.camera/ if you sideloaded a build.

  • the DCIM folder contains your still images, in .gif format.
  • the MOVIES folder contains your videos also as .gif (but animated).

Note: it is not recommended deleting media from there (unless you wipe everything out), instead use the camera roll of the app, to make sure that the preview thumbnails it uses stay in sync with the gif files. Please also do not rename files on your Data Disk for the same reason.

TODO

  • Add sound effects
  • Add an animated preview for movies in the camera roll (i.e. generate a .pdv in addition to the .gif)
  • Add stickers and cool stuff
  • Fix all the issues UwU

Known issues

Remember the disclaimer from above ? A lot of progress has been made since the early days of this project; but it is still easy to crash the Playdate with it. If you nave to remember only one rule, that would be never put the playdate to sleep when in viewfinder mode.

  • PD crashes if streaming in viewfinder for more than 4-5 minutes without any interruption (memory leak?). Interrupting the stream from time to time by e.g. returning to the home screen seems to prevent the crash indefinitely (GC?).

  • Putting the Playdate to sleep while in viewfinder or while compressing the video into gif crashes and reboots the console.

  • Opening system menu while in viewfinder stops the image feed, you'll need to go to home screen and back to viewfinder to restart it.

  • The camera roll seems to get faster at wrapping between top and bottom after opening it, exiting and then returning to it for some reason.

  • Camera settings currently lose sync if exiting the app and then relaunching it without power cycling the Teensy. Could be fixed in software but not without adding a ton on complexity.

Credits

Made possible by

Fonts

Other

Playdate is © Panic Inc. - this project isn't affiliated with or endorsed by them in any way (just like that one)