My title is David Windestal, and on this video and article, I’ll share how one can hack and modify a Recreation Boy Digicam to mount severe digital camera lenses with a purpose to shoot superb lo-fi images.
Desk of Contents
An Intro to the Recreation Boy Digicam
It is a Recreation Boy Digicam. A tool that turns any Recreation Boy right into a digital camera.
Launched in 1998 and retailing for $50 (equal to $85 in at the moment’s cash) it was the smallest digital digital camera in the marketplace on the time.
It really works identical to some other sport for the Recreation Boy, it simply slots into the again. And identical to that, you’ve turned your handheld gaming console right into a fully-fledged point-and-shoot digital camera. It was good because the Recreation Boy’s giant display screen was used because the viewfinder.
That is the sensor on this beast of a digital camera. It’s a 14 kilo-pixel (0.014 Megapixel) 1/4″ CMOS sensor. It captures 128x128px photos, that are cropped and saved as 128x112px photos. The Recreation Boy Digicam can retailer as much as 30 of those photos. There was no means of getting these photos of the digital camera off the digital camera and onto some other digital storage media on the time (There’s now although, extra on that later), when you had 30 photos you needed to delete previous ones. The one technique to get photos off the cartridge was to make use of this superb accent:
The Recreation Boy Printer. An ultra-portable thermal printer that produced postage-stamp-sized prints proper there in your hand and it was powered by batteries!
I purchased this Recreation Boy Digicam in 1999 after I was 12 years previous with my birthday cash.
I’ve at all times beloved it. I discovered it in a field lately and began enjoying round with it. It oozes attraction. The pictures are so distinctive trying. You’ll be able to immediately determine if an image comes from a Recreation Boy Digicam. There actually isn’t something prefer it. It’s tremendous simple to take photos with it, unhealthy photos that it. Taking good ones is a little bit of a problem.
The images are low decision and have a colour depth of two bits, which means the digital camera can produce pixels of black, white, and two shades of gray.
For comparability, a contemporary digital camera working in 10-bit colour house can produce over 1 billion completely different shades of colour. The Recreation Boy Digicam makes correct lighting a necessity to get photos in which you’ll inform what they painting.
Additionally, the one settings you’re capable of make in-camera is to alter the brightness and distinction, each of that are utilized on prime of the auto publicity function (which you’ll’t flip off btw). So there isn’t any means of locking in publicity or something comparable. Making issues much more troublesome/difficult.
Utilizing Massive Lenses on the Small Digicam
So why use this digital camera in 2022? It’s the constraints which can be interesting. How a lot are you able to specific and convey with a 0.014-megapixel picture in black, white, and two shades of gray? It’s the problem of taking absolutely the coolest photos doable with this know-how, pushing it to the restrict.
And that is what we’re going to try to do! Now I’ve two objectives in thoughts.
I wish to take an image of the moon. I need the moon to take up as a lot of the body as doable whereas nonetheless capturing the entire thing.
I additionally wish to take tremendous close-up images aka macro pictures.
Each of those require me to suit completely different lenses to the Recreation Boy Digicam, so I’m going to make a fast swap system that enables me to alter between completely different lens mounts shortly. Because the moon is waning I’ll begin with the mount for this lens:
It’s a Pentax-Ok mount Chinon 300mm f/5.6 classic lens I bought actual low-cost from a web-based thrift retailer. For what I paid for it, It’s loopy good glass.
So why did I select a 300mm lens? As I discussed earlier, I need as a lot of the moon as doable to replenish the body with out it being cropped.
If you happen to’ve performed any DSLR pictures with a 300mm lens you recognize that it’s fairly a little bit of zoom, but it surely’s nowhere near filling the body with the moon.
So why would it not have the ability to fill the body on a Recreation Boy Digicam? It comes all the way down to sensor measurement.
That is the dimensions of a “full-frame” aka 35mm sensor on the left subsequent to the dimensions of the Recreation Boy Digicam sensor on the fitting:
As you may see it’s fairly tiny in comparison with a full-frame sensor. It’s about 1/eleventh of the realm.
Inserting this within the middle of the picture circle you may see that solely a small a part of the picture projected by the lens really is captured by the sensor.
The smaller sensor mainly sees this 300mm lens as a 3200mm lens. This is called “crop issue”. The smaller the sensor the smaller portion of the picture produced by the lens is captured by the sensor. It’s ”cropping the picture”. The sensor within the Recreation Boy Digicam has a crop issue of 10.81x. Which means that to get the identical stage of zoom on a full-frame sensor you would want a focal size 10.81 occasions as lengthy.
Now time for some math. The moon is about 3475km in diameter and the space from earth varies between 356600km and 406600km. If you happen to stand on the face of the earth and lookup you may think about that the night time sky you may see is 180° large. Utilizing the small-angle approximation angle system the moon will take up 0.49 to 0.56° of the night time sky.
The sphere of view of a digital camera in levels may be calculated with this system 2 arctan * (sensor measurement / (2 * the focal size of the lens)).
The shortest aspect of the picture sensor that’s captured on the Recreation Boy Digicam is 3.15mm. So 2 arctan * (3.15/(2*300)) = 0.6°
On the time of capturing this video, the moon is 368000km away from the earth, which comes out to 0.54°. That means that 90% of the peak of the body could be coated by the moon. Which I believe could be good as 100% protection could be very troublesome to border.
All good so let’s get began designing a mount for this lens!
Making a Customized Lens Mount
Whereas taking the digital camera aside I seen this gorgeous large scratch-looking factor on the sensor.
Besides, when taking a look at it carefully, it doesn’t seem like a scratch however somewhat a deformation within the casting of the highest of the sensor. Right here have a look below the microscope.
I ponder how this handed high quality management. I’m undecided the place I put the receipt nor if they’ve a 25-year guarantee. I suppose I’ve to reside with it. We’ll see how a lot it exhibits up within the photos. Perhaps I can work round it.
The sensor was made by Mitchubitchi. That’s cool! I didn’t know they did electronics like this. After some googling, I discovered the datasheet for the sensor. It’s the M64282FP. They name it the Synthetic Retina LSI. “This system can detect a picture and course of the picture concurrently as human retinas can” 16usec to 1 sec publicity time and 1 lux low mild capabilities. Spectacular! Hyperlink to the datasheet.
Let’s design a 3D printable mount for the sensor and make a fast swap lens system.
I’ll be utilizing the CAD/CAM software program Fustion360 for making these elements. The standards I set for myself for this design had been to do no everlasting adjustments to any unique elements of the digital camera in order that I simply can restore the digital camera to its unique state and solely use unique screws, no inserts and solely 3D printed elements.
Be aware: If you’re within the design information, you may obtain them right here.
The primary half I made was the half that will get clamped down between the 2 cartridge shells.
This design will be unable to swivel or something fancy like that. It’s going to be mounted angle to be as stiff and robust as doable. I then added the ball form as exactly as I might to get a decent match towards the opening after which a cup that may settle for the sensor holder.
Talking of which, is designed like this: The sensor screws into the again utilizing the unique screws. A screw for retaining the sensor holder within the cup prevents it from rotating.
On the entrance of the sensor holder is an M33x2mm thread. That is used to mount completely different lens adapters. There are fairly just a few activates the thread as it can get rid of any mild leak. Threads this measurement are fairly simple to print when you’ve got a decently tuned printer. A normal tip concerning threads. All the time finish the male thread earlier than the feminine thread and create a reduction on the prime. This can be certain that the highest surfaces of each elements register towards one another and lay flat.
Relying on how properly your printer is tuned you will have so as to add some tolerance to the threads. The simplest means to do that is through the use of the push-pull command and lowering the dimensions by 0.05mm for a well-tuned printer and 0.1mm for a not-so-well-tuned printer. A minimum of that may be a good start line. You possibly can do that to each female and male threads however I often solely do it on one of many two.
I at all times select to do that on the thread that I’ll print the fewest of as then I don’t should do it on all different threads I make after this. On this case, I’ll do it on the sensor aspect as I’ll print a bunch of various adapters.
Subsequent, we have to discuss flange distance. A lens is designed to focus at a particular level behind the mount.
Completely different lens methods have completely different distances. Like Canon makes use of 44mm and Nikon makes use of 46.5mm. The Pentax-Ok mount is 45.46mm. I doubt I’ll have the ability to hit that actual quantity with this many items related collectively, so I did the subsequent smartest thing. I made it adjustable. I added an M58x2mm thread to the entrance of the adapter which I then can fine-tune the flange distance with the digital camera operating to completely hit that 45.46mm. As soon as I’ve it dialed in I’ll add a tiny drop of glue to forestall it from transferring.
Since there’s a lot thread engagement there received’t be any mild leak from this joint both. One factor to be careful for is mild leaks across the 3D-print-to-lens interface. I extremely advocate printing the flange adapter floor towards the mattress of the printer to verify it’s utterly flat. If you happen to do that you simply shouldn’t have any points. Additionally, use a black filament and loads of partitions on the prints to forestall any mild from discovering its technique to the sensor.
I additionally printed this little lens tripod adapter. I need as little stress on the Recreation Boy Digicam cartridge as doable and the Recreation Boy is way lighter than the lens. This manner the middle of gravity of the setup can be actually near the mounting level, which reduces stress.
That is the way it turned out:
Photographing the Moon
Let’s see how a lot zoom this factor has.
It is a LEGO determine that stands 43mm tall that I put on the different finish of my home, 13 meters away. That may be a fairly loopy quantity of zoom! I believe I’m able to {photograph} the moon.
At 10 pm that night time began heading out to the sphere. The snow is a beautiful 30cm deep. 10 minutes of strolling later I’m out on the sphere. I go searching and the place the heck is the moon? Seems it doesn’t rise till Midnight. Sigh. Didn’t even take into consideration checking that earlier than setting out. Again we go. Wait two hours. Stroll out once more. This time I might see the moon by means of the bushes whereas strolling.
When it’s this darkish the FPS on the Recreation Boy Digicam goes all the way down to 1 or 1/2 a body per second, making aiming and focusing fairly the problem. It took like 5 minutes to even discover the moon after which it takes a stable 30 seconds earlier than it’s performed setting the auto publicity. After which I have to focus.
It appears like my math was appropriate because the moon is filling up the entire body. It’s fairly loopy how shortly the moon strikes within the body at this stage of zoom. Whereas the digital camera is setting the auto-exposure the moon has moved far sufficient that I generally wanted to reframe the shot.
After the auto-exposure did its factor the FPS did bounce as much as maybe 5 making issues lots simpler. Simply respiratory on the tripod would shake the entire thing although. Fortunately because the FPS was so low you can hit the A button actual fast and it could save the body it was presently displaying which was drawn 1/tenth of a second earlier, making it doable to get sharp photographs. And man, simply take a look at these photos I managed to seize!
Throughout some photos, some clouds handed by and made issues look actually cool. Keep in mind it is a image of an object 368000km away taken with a toy digital camera from 1998.
Transferring Images from the Recreation Boy Digicam
However wait you may say. Didn’t you say there was no technique to get the photographs off the Recreation Boy Digicam earlier? Nicely, fortunately we reside sooner or later and there are answers obtainable now. They arrive in two classes, those that faux to be a Recreation Boy printer and the extra subtle ones that instantly learn the information from the cartridge.
The first one is admittedly low-cost and straightforward to DIY for a few {dollars} however is gradual and a bit cumbersome to make use of, and the second one is round 50 bucks to purchase however very easy to make use of. It actually exhibits up as a detachable drive in your laptop and you may simply drag and drop the photographs onto your exhausting drive.
Being each low-cost and don’t have the endurance to attend weeks for supply, I went with the DIY resolution. I even have all of the whopping two parts wanted at house.
These parts are an Arduino and a Recreation Boy Hyperlink cable.
In case you have a knockoff cable or one that you simply don’t care about you may merely reduce one finish off and solder it straight to the Arduino. Mine is an unique cable and I don’t wish to dedicate it to this undertaking, so I’m going to make a customized PCB that may double as a connector, utilizing a freaking laser.
I solely had 0.8mm copper plated FR10 board at house so I reduce a prime and a backside board and can stack them collectively later to get the 1.6mm thickness that the center part of the Recreation Boy cable wants.
Be aware: All of the design information can be found right here in EasyEDA format.
I’m utilizing a 50W Raycus Fiber laser fitted with a 110mm lens. It really works within the 1000nm wavelength making it wonderful for chopping metals. The targeted spot measurement is extremely small which makes one of these laser ship all its energy into a really small space in comparison with a CO2 laser which additional aids the chopping skill, but in addition the aptitude of constructing very tiny markings.
They’re extremely quick as they use a tilting mirror to intention the beam whereas a CO2 laser strikes a heavy gantry round. Max velocity is round 7 meters per second! Which is foolish quick.
The draw back is the very restricted measurement of the work space. But it surely compensates for this by sounding freaking superb.
Listed here are the completed boards. The settings I used when chopping weren’t optimum so the pads that aren’t related to something thus had little or no floor contact with the board form of fell off. However the remainder of the board turned out properly sufficient for this utility.
Now naked copper tends to make unhealthy connectors as copper oxidizes shortly and the floor turns into non-conductive. So to increase the lifetime of this connector I’m going to tin it utilizing solder. It’s not the most effective resolution, but it surely’s going to final a lot, for much longer than naked copper.
I used this flux in gel kind, which turned out to work nice. An excellent-thin layer of solder is all that’s wanted so I eliminated any extra utilizing a solder wick, then cleaned off the realm with some isopropanol alcohol.
I then glued the boards collectively utilizing some CA glue and used the pins to align the boards. I 3D printed a connector in order that I don’t plug within the cable the mistaken means…
…and a case for the entire thing to make it look a bit snazzier.
Be aware: All of the design information can be found right here.
Alright, let’s flip this Arduino right into a Recreation Boy printer emulator! First, obtain the “Arduino Gameboy Printer Emulator” undertaking by Brian Khuu from GitHub.
Then add the Arduino sketch and open the serial monitor. Set the baud price to 115200. That’s it actually on the programming aspect.
Now, all we have now to do is to print a picture from the Recreation Boy Digicam and the Arduino will spit out a pair of hex digits for every pixel. We’ll then copy that and open this web site that’s linked on the GitHub undertaking web page. This web page turns the hex code into photos. Paste it within the window and hit replace. Growth! Now you might have a pixel-perfect picture out of your Recreation Boy Digicam that you could obtain as a PNG or JPG.
You’ll be able to even select completely different colour palettes to alter the texture of the pictures. I personally favor the Recreation Boy Pocket look. Maybe as a result of that’s the handheld I had after I grew up, however the unique Recreation Boy inexperienced could be very iconic.
Suggestions for a Higher Switch Course of
Earlier than I overlook listed here are some tricks to make the switch course of rather less painful. You don’t should switch one image at a time. If you happen to push “choose” on the primary display screen, then select “hyperlink”, then “print”, then “Possibility” you may quick-select all the pictures you wish to print.
Then hit print and it’ll print all these photos in sequence. The web site that converts the hex to photographs understands that there are a number of photos within the stream so you may simply copy-paste the entire block and it’ll routinely make separate photos that you could obtain.
The quickest technique to delete all the photographs from the cartridge is to wipe the entire cartridge — maintain the beginning and choose buttons throughout boot up and it’ll ask you if you wish to delete all the pieces. By far the quickest technique to begin taking photos once more however it can additionally delete any sport progress or songs you’ve made within the DJ studio.
There are some mini-games you may play and you may make some dope music within the DJ studio however the entire menu system of the Recreation Boy Digicam is, to place it in variety phrases, a bit odd. I believe what occurred was the CEO of Nintendo gave some new builders the duty of constructing the software program for the brand new Recreation Boy Digicam. The builders made two variations, one which was tremendous clear {and professional} and one which was made as a joke.
They then despatched the joke model to the CEO for approval whereas all guffawing collectively anticipating a name from the CEO any second. After they didn’t hear again from the CEO in a few days the lead designer was confused and gave the CEO a name. Hey CEO, how did you just like the Recreation Boy Digicam software program? – Yeah sorry Bob I didn’t have time to look it over, I simply despatched it straight into manufacturing. I belief you guys did a superb job.
I’m undecided what else can clarify the alternatives made right here. Like, what the heck is that this?
What does a head popping out of its personal mouth should do with viewing photos? Or a boy nearly crying when taking photos? And the error messages. Like, what the precise heck is the very first thing that got here to thoughts the primary time I had certainly one of these pop up?
Shut-Up Images with a Macro Lens
Anyhow whereas attempting to overlook I ever noticed that image, I made a decision to print a Canon mount for the digital camera. This manner I can take some candy macro photographs. I’ll be utilizing this tremendous good Canon 100mm f/2.8 lens. I made a tripod mount for this one as properly, as attempting to take handheld macro photos with an 1100mm equal focal size lens may be tough, to say the least.
I scavenged the home for some lifeless bugs and located a bunch of cool stuff. Maybe I ought to clear extra typically?
I’ve this photograph tent that I’ll mild with two 98CRI, 100W LEDs mounted in softboxes. Maybe the CRI ranking doesn’t matter that a lot on this case when the digital camera can solely seize 4 shades of gray. I simply wished to flex a little bit.
I’m additionally utilizing the Ikea JANSJÖ LED lamps that I’ve modified with 98CRI 5500K LEDs as a substitute of the horrible yellow inventory ones. This manner they match the softbox LED’s colour temperature and colour render index completely and I exploit them as accent lighting when taking product photos.
Anyhow, let’s take an image of a fly’s face!
I can get even nearer but it surely turns into extra obscure what you’re seeing at this level.
Images Shot with the Hacked Recreation Boy Digicam
Listed here are another cool photographs I captured with the hacked Recreation Boy Digicam and huge digital camera lenses:
Wasps are imply jerks that don’t contribute something helpful to nature. I as soon as by chance bumped a hidden nest that was beneath me whereas putting in a ladder on the highest of my roof. I used to be caught up there for half-hour heading off wasps. It was 30°C outdoors so I used to be carrying shorts and I’d taken off my t-shirt. I’ve had extra enjoyable on the dentist.
Now, it is a homicide hornet:
They sound like freaking helicopters after they get inside the home, however I at all times catch them and allow them to again out. Why? They eat wasps. They’re additionally fairly chill to people. They appear cool as heck too.
I took another cool photos too:
And these snowflake photos are in all probability a few of the coolest photos I’ve ever taken on any digital camera:
I’m so impressed by what this little digital camera can ship. Snowflakes have plenty of distinction between their form and the background, which did make them lots simpler to {photograph}. These photos alone made the modification price it. Extra photos of random issues:
Mounting CCTV Lenses from FPV Drones
I additionally made a few mounts for some CCTV lenses I had laying round from my FPV flying days.
It is a 1.6mm lens and a 2.8mm.
The 1.6mm lens is admittedly large and positively counts as a fisheye lens. It’s fairly cool to have the ability to take photos like this with such a small sensor as properly.
That is my canine taken with the 1.6mm lens:
And right here is one taken with a 50mm lens for comparability (I needed to be on the opposite aspect of the room to take this one):
Even a 2-bit 0.014-megapixel digital camera can take good photos below the fitting circumstances. Taking good photos may be troublesome at occasions although as you at all times should struggle the auto publicity and you must mild the scene strategically. However the modification was 100% well worth the time invested. I’ll cherish these photos for a very long time to come back.
I hope this in-depth take a look at how one can hack a Recreation Boy Digicam to make use of severe digital camera lenses was attention-grabbing and informative to you!
In regards to the writer: David Windestal is obsessed with hacking issues and galvanizing folks to be taught whereas having enjoyable. His content material may be discovered on his YouTube channel, and he’s additionally a part of the staff at HackMakeMod. This text was additionally revealed right here.
