Pimaton is now installable via pip!

Introduction

Yesterday was a small step for me entering the world of python packaging :)

As you’ve read before I’ve decided to create a photobooth application for raspberrypi for a wedding in August. Last time, I posted some pictures of the pimaton in action during an evening with a friend.

Since the code seems stable and usable (all MVP features are done but one: the GPIO button), I decided to follow my beloved “release early, release often” principle and create a pip package so Pimaton can be installed easily on a raspberrypi.

I won’t spend time on how I created the package, as there is plenty of documentation about it online already, and the process is pretty straight forward :). The important thing is that it is now possible to boot a raspbian on a pi and install pimaton in 2 minutes. The package page is here

Click on the image below to see a quick gif of the GUI (NOTA: The camera stream is not shown here as PiCamera handle it on its own above X, check the video to see it fully. And the print option is disabled):

Figure 1: Pimaton UI gif

You can see it working on quick video here: {{< youtube HJ43O-nPQzw >}}

Installation

Now pimaton can be installed as simply as:

    # Install dependencies:
    sudo apt install python-pip libjpeg-dev
    pip install -U pip
    # To enable GUI:
    sudo apt install python-tk python-pil.imagetk
    pip install pimaton

Then, duplicate the default config file to start modifying it:

    cp /usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/pimaton/assets/default_config.yaml /path/to/myconfig.yaml

And then edit the configuration file. Read carefully the comment before editing everything :) If you have X installed, I strongly suggest using the GUI for now by changing the ui_mode to gui:).

Then you can start running pimaton:

    pimaton --config-file=/path/to/myconfig.yaml
    pimaton --config-file=/path/to/myconfig.yaml --debug # verbose mode.

What can it do so far:

• Take pictures and generate a final picture with thumbnails of the taken picture (by default 6 pictures that will be displayed on 2 rows and 3 columns)
• Print that picture if a printer is plugged in
• Very configurable:

  • TUI (very basic for now) and GUI mode

  • Multiple start input (keyboard, touchscreen and GPIO soon)

  • A template file (image with decoration to be the base of rendered image) can be used

    • A empty template with placeholder can be generated to help the template image creation

  • Picture size (taken by picamera), thumbnails (printed pictures), number and disposition of final rendering

  • Time between steps / loops

  • All texts

  • Print is an option, number of copies can be configured.

  • All picamera settings can be overridden.

More information can be found on the README.