photo-booth

A multi-platform photo booth software using Electron and your camera

(Source: The Verge, accessed 08 March 2018)

Community

IMPORTANT NOTE: I'm glad that so many are interested in photo-booth! Nevertheless, this is a software development project and not an end user software! Setting up and using photo-booth requires (at least basic) knowledge in software development, such as dealing with Git, JavaScript, Node and Linux. My goal here is to jointly improve this project according to the open source philosophy. Please understand that I can not provide support if this basic knowledge is missing.

I have set up a mailing list to serve as a platform for exchange between new and experienced users. Therefore, I ask that as many as possible participate in the mailing list in order to share experiences as well as to provide assistance.

Send an empty email to [email protected] to join the list, then ask your questions to [email protected].

For feature requests and bug reports feel free to open an issue.

If you like my project and you want to keep me motivated:

How it works

Simply connect your camera via USB or even via wifi to the computer running this application, for example a Raspberry Pi. The app shows a countdown by clicking at the screen (or tapping at a touchscreen), triggers your camera to take a photo, downloads it from your camera, shrinks it to a smaller size and displays it on the screen. First in fullscreen, then added to a gallery of previous taken photos.

photo-booth also provides a web application by running a webserver. Every newly taken photo gets immediately pushed to the webapp. From there it's easy for your guests to download their photos. There's also the option to leave a contact address for sending the photos afterwards. Creating GIF animations and printing out selected photos are also possible through the web application. You only have to provide a Wi-Fi hotspot and a printer (optional for printing feature).

Because of the use of gphoto2 and cups it works with nearly any camera or printer like plug and play.

Installation

To clone and run this repository you'll need Git, Node.js, gphoto2 and CUPS installed.

Before getting started please check here if the hardware you want to use is supported. I tested photo-booth under Ubuntu Linux (64bit), MacOS and Raspbian (Raspberry Pi 3, ARM). Anyway, the documentation here will be focused on Linux based systems.

Also check here if your camera is supported (at least Image Capture should be available). Please also note, that only the JPEG-mode of your camera is currently supported (no RAW or RAW+JPEG).

Raspbian STRETCH (with desktop):

# Install needed dependencies
sudo apt update
sudo apt install git libxss-dev libgconf-2-4 libnss3

# Install latest version of libgphoto2, choose last stable release
wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/gonzalo/gphoto2-updater/master/gphoto2-updater.sh && sudo bash gphoto2-updater.sh

# If you are using a Raspberry Pi > 1: Activate hardware acceleration
sudo apt install libgl1-mesa-dri
sudo su -c 'grep -q -F "dtoverlay=vc4-kms-v3d" /boot/config.txt || echo "dtoverlay=vc4-kms-v3d" >> /boot/config.txt'

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/philipptrenz/photo-booth.git && cd photo-booth

# Make the Node installation script executable
sudo chmod +x ./scripts/install_node_v9.sh

# Install node
sudo ./scripts/install_node_v9.sh

# Install (you can do this later if you want to add a printer to use the printing feature)
npm install

Run photo-booth

To run photo-booth the following command should do it. To run the webapp on port 80 and for the usage of GPIO pins at the Raspberry Pi root privileges are required.

WORKAROUND FOR RASPBERRY PI 3 if Photo-Booth stays black

export LD_PRELOAD=node_modules/sharp/vendor/lib/libz.so

Important: The command needs to be run from a terminal on the GUI, executing via SSH will most likely fail!

sudo npm start

Basically, it's not a good idea to run a web server as root, if you do not need GPIOs consider setting up a redirect from port 80 to 8080 on your system. That can be achieved by a iptables rule for example. Then you can start photo-booth with

npm start

HINT: The little linux tool unclutter can hide the cursor.

Start photo-booth on boot (for Raspberry Pi)

To start photo-booth on boot add the following line at the end of /home/pi/.config/lxsession/LXDE-pi/autostart:

@sudo node /home/pi/photo-booth/scripts/cli.js

Configure it

There are a few settings and options that you should take a look at.

The config.json

The project includes a config.json file. There you can set several parameters, e.g. to start in fullscreen or not or if you want to keep your taken photos on your camera.

It looks like this:

{
	"language": "en",
	"init": {
		"fullscreen": true,
		"width": "1440",
		"height": "900",
		"showDevTools": false,
		"useGPIO": false,
		"grayscaleMode": true,
		"preventScreensaver": false
	},
	"maxImageSize": 1500,
	"countdownLength": 5,
	"slideshow": {
		"enabled": true,
		"activatesAfterSeconds": 30,
		"secondsPerImages": 8
	},
	"gphoto2": {
		"capturetarget": 1,
		"keep": true,
		"simulate": false
	},
	"content_dir": null,
	"webapp": {
		"password": "test",
		"maxDownloadImageSize": 800,
		"gifDelay": 1000,
		"enableRemoteRelease": true,
		"contactAddressType": "email"
	},
	"printing": {
		"enabled": false,
		"simulate": false,
		"printer": "printer-name",
		"limitPerUser": 0,
		"overlay": {
			"image": "overlay.png",
			"x": "right",
			"y": "bottom"
		},
		"grayscale": true,
		"layouts": []
	},
	"live": {
		"framerate": 10
	},
	"branding": {
		"type": "text",
		"content": "<div style='font-size: 1.2em; padding-left: 25px;'><i class='fa fa-wifi' aria-hidden='true' style='font-size: 2.5em;'></i> <b style='font-size: 2em; padding-left: 15px;'>photo-booth</b><br /><p>Log into wifi, browse to <b style='padding: 0 5px;'>photo.app</b> and download your photos!</p></div>",
		"position": "bottomleft"
	},
	"flash": {
	  "enabled": true
	}
}

Best way to modify the config.json is by copying it to my.config.json, photo-booth will prefer the latter one:

cp config.json my.config.json

Some notes:

• Images get shrinked after got downloaded from the camera, set the size with maxImageWidth
• You have to figure out the captureTarget of your camera. Even if you choose to keep images at the camera, if gphoto2 chooses to store by default to the RAM of your camera, images get deleted when camera get turned off. Figure out the right captureTarget by running gphoto2 --get-config=capturetarget, then choose something should named sd card or so. This should be your first try if a photo gets taken, but it won't show up at the screen.
• If you want to keep images on camera, set keep to true
• The errorMessage is pure HTML, just fill in whatever you want
• Slideshow and liveview do not work together.
• You have to experiment with the framerate for live preview depending on the power of your machine. On a Notebook with an Intel i7-8550U upto 15% CPU utilization are needed for 20 frames per second. Also if your camera is running on battery, it drastically decreases the battery duration.
• When flash is set to enabled a white page will be shown as a flash after completing the countdown
• You can use gphoto2.simulate = true when you want to test your setup without an active camera connection
• The webapp.contactAddressType defines what kind of address types are supported inside the webapp. Supported values are none (feature disabled), email (email validation) and text (no input validation).

How to use the integrated webapp

As mentioned above photo-booth has a built in web page where images can be downloaded, gif animations can be created and images can be printed.

For an easy way to use it, start a open wifi hotspot on the computer photo-booth runs on. If you use a Raspberry Pi, there're enough tutorials out there to figure it out (i.e. here). Then connect your device, e.g. a smartphone, with the wifi, open your browser and type in the ip address of the Pi. More elegant is it to configure a DNS redirect so the users can type in a web address like "photo.app", therefore I use dnsmasq which is also configured as DHCP server.

Use a push button to trigger photos

You can connect a physical push button to the GPIO Pins of your Pi to trigger photos!

Therefore activate the GPIOs by setting "useGPIO": true in config.json. Then connect the first port of the push button to the ground pin of your Pi, second to GPIO 3 (PIN 5) and to a resistor of about 10k-100kΩ, the other end of the resistor to 3.3V (e.g. PIN 1). That's all!

Make sure you run the application as root (sudo npm start), GPIOs need root privileges.

 _______RASPBERRY PI_______
                          |
          |----3.3V---●o  |
 ~50kΩ →  ▯           oo  |
          |----GPIO3--●o  |
      [-\             oo  |
         \------GND---●o  |
                      oo  |
                      oo  |
                      oo  |
                      oo  |
                      oo  |
                      oo  |
                      oo  |
                      oo  |
                          |
                          |

Install a printer

photo-booth also supports image printing with configurable layouts. For this feature to work you need a supported printer, install additional software and configure the layouts individually.

Install printer software

1. Connect and power on the printer
2. Run the following scripts:

   sudo apt-get update
   
   # Install additional libraries for collage creation
   sudo apt-get install libpixman-1-dev
   sudo apt-get install libcairo2-dev libjpeg-dev libgif-dev
   sudo apt-get install libpango1.0-dev
   
   # Install cups
   sudo apt-get install cups
   
   # Install cups-config (needed for node-printer)
   sudo apt-get install libcups2-dev
   
   # Change user (adjust pi, if you have changed this)
   sudo usermod -a -G lpadmin pi
   
   # Install optional node modules
   cd photo-booth
   npm install
   
   cd helpers/collage
   npm install
   

3. Navigate to http://localhost:631 and add the new printer
   • Important: Remember the name, you need it for the configuration file later
4. Check if the printer is enabled and is accepting jobs. This can be done using the UI or with the following commands:

   # Check state
   lpstat -p
   
   # Enable if the printer is disabled
   cupsenable printer-name
   

Configure the application

• Configure the content in config.json (or my.config.json) under the section printing
• Set enabled to true
• Set simulate to true if you only want to test the image generation
• Set printer to the printer name you configured during the installation process
• Set limitPerUser if you want to limit the printouts per person. 0 means no limit and with the webapp password you always have unlimited printouts.
• Use grayscale if you want to print only grayscale images (seperate config only for printing feature) - Warning: The grayscale feature does not work for larger DPI values.
• Use overlay to add a image to each printout. Be sure that it matches all your layouts (eg. 2x2 layout with spacing won't match with an overlay in the same color as the background color) and also consider that not all placehoders must be occupied (eg. do not use the background color in the overlay image)
• Configure the layouts under layouts. You can add multiple layouts (the user can select the desired layout from within the web application). A sample layout looks like this:

   {
   	"key": "selphy_2x2",
   	"options": {
   		"dpi": 300,
   		"width": 2,
   		"height": 2,
   		"imageWidth": 868,
   		"imageHeight": 577,
   		"backgroundColor": "#ffffff",
   		"spacing": {
   			"top": 8,
   			"left": 0,
   			"bottom": 8,
   			"right": 1,
   			"betweenImages": 11
   		}
   	}
   }
  

  • This sample layout is a 2x2 layout optimized for the following configuration:
    • Canon Selphy CP1300 printer with a paper size of 100 x 148 mm and a resolution of 300 x 300dpi (eg. 1181 x 1748 px)
    • Nikon D90 camera with a picture size of 4288x2848 which results in a width to height factor of 1.5056...
  • Description of the options:
    • key: Internal identifier for the layout. Must not contain invalid file name characters
    • dpi: The printer resolution
      • Note: Must not match the full printer DPI (images will be scaled to the whole printing area)
      • Defaults to 96, which should already be quiet good for most portable low quality printers
      • Warning: Higher DPI values require more resources, which can be too much for a small computer like a Raspberry PI. Also the grayscale function does not work at higher resolutions anymore.
    • width and height: Number of images per row / column
    • imageWidth and imageHeight: The width / height of each individual image in the layout. Try to set the values in a way that it will give the same aspect ration as the original image size from the camera.
    • backgroundColor: Layout background color which is used to fill the spacing, the unused space when the original images do not have the same aspect ratio or placeholders without an image.
    • spacing: Spacing outside the images (top, left, bottom and right) and between two individual images (betweenImages).

Unsupported devices

Please note that there are several devices which are not supported by photo-booth.

Unsupported architectures

As Electron, the main framework, besides ia32 (i686) and x64 (amd64) only supports the ARM v7 architecture (and ARM v8 as it is backwards compatible), several ARM devices are not supported. Further information can be found here. The following ARM devices among others can not be supported:

• Raspberry Pi Zero
• Raspberry Pi Zero W / WH
• Raspberry Pi 1 A / A+
• Raspberry Pi 1 B / B+

Unsupported cameras

• The Raspberry Pi camera module is not supported
• Webcams (such as those built into your laptop or Logitech USB) are not supported

Also some other DSLR and Compact Cameras are not supported. Please check for your specific model here.

Common issues

If you have any problems, start reading here. If you do not find anything, check under Issues, if someone else already had a similar problem. If you still have no solution, open a new issue.

How to quit photo-booth in fullscreen?

Hit the Escape key to exit the fullscreen mode, then you can close the app.

Why are all images in grayscale?

Go to config.json and change grayscaleMode to false.

My camera takes a photo, but it does not show up

This may be related to wrong capture target settings. Run gphoto2 --get-config capturetarget from the console, the output looks something like this:

Label: Capture Target
Type: RADIO
Current: Internal RAM
Choice: 0 Memory card
Choice: 1 Internal RAM

Identify the number of the memory card and change the captureTarget property in config.json.

error (-53 'could not claim the usb device')

It seems to be an old known problem with gvfs-gphoto2-volume-monitor module. For reference read here.

sudo rm /usr/share/dbus-1/services/org.gtk.vfs.GPhoto2VolumeMonitor.service
sudo rm /usr/share/gvfs/mounts/gphoto2.mount
sudo rm /usr/share/gvfs/remote-volume-monitors/gphoto2.monitor
sudo rm /usr/lib/gvfs/gvfs-gphoto2-volume-monitor

Contributors

• wikijm
• blak3r
• probststefan
• jgoestl
• lal12
• blaueQuelle
• andi34
• vangod90

Mentions

The project got featured at The Verge, incredible! Also take a look at the video they made at Facebook!

An article was also published in the blog of my degree course (in German).

partyblitzer published a post on his blog and a video on YouTube using this software for his DIY photo booth setup.