Raspberry pi zero camera with a battery?

Question

Hey guys, just bought a raspberry pi zero v 1.3. In this version I'm able to connect the camera module with an special adapter cable. Do you know how to build a small and tiny camera? My project is to build a camera which could run itselfs. With its own lion battery, a button to take pictures and this kind of staff. Any idea of how to do it in a safe way?? A lot of thanks

clem57 · Answer

Take a look at this discussion https://www.reddit.com/r/raspberry_pi/comments/3yaons/smallest_battery_for_a_zero/ . I would get one that could be detached an hour or two and then gets recharged from a USB port. Post the project as you go. Nice project, Clem

nbizzell · Answer

To make it happen you would just need to select a suitable battery (probably like clem57 said a USB power pack would be ideal). You would then need to connect up the camera to the cable and the button to a gpio pin and ground. Then a simple script that would automatically run at start up (use crontab) to trigger the camera when the button is pressed. You mention safety, did you have specific concerns? Probably making sure the remaining GPIO pins are protected against a short from a ring or other jewelry when in use could be a good idea (although mainly for the safety of the Pi) could be a great application for a 3d printed case.

nbizzell · Answer

The button will do what you program it to do (in this case trigger the camera to take a picture) so it should be able to take a picture when you press the button. For some further inspiration and help you could look at the resources below: If you are just trying to figure out how to get the button to take a picture rather than video then the first bit of this resource form the raspberry pi foundation might help - https://www.raspberrypi.org/learning/push-button-stop-motion/ st ignore the bits about combining the pictures to make it stop motion) http://makezine.com/projects/raspberry-pi-point-and-shoot-camera/ is a very similar project to yours (but uses a b form factor)

rew · Answer

The fun thing about the raspberry pi is that it runs directly on a LIPO battery. You can circumvent the inefficiency of transforming the LIPO voltage to 5V and back again by directly powering the raspberry pi from tthe lipo. Just connect it to the 5V rails of the Pi. This will work as long as the battery voltage is above "a little above 3.3V". Say about 3.5V. Your LIPO is almost empty at that point anyway.

To prevent damage to your LIPO you need to shut off the pi when the voltage drops below 3.3V. Possibly a "protected" cell will suffice.

The drawback is that "stuff that uses 5V" doesn't work. This includes HDMI to VGA converters on the HDMI port and various USB devices. But in the simplest version of your project you won't need any of that.... (but you won't have a screen like on a modern digital camera).

colporteur · Answer

It would help if I included the link:) https://www.raspberrypi.org/magpi-issues/Essentials_Camera_v1.pdf Sean