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Gugusse Roller transfers analogue film to digital with Raspberry Pi

4 October 2024 at 19:22

This canny way to transfer analogue film to digital was greatly improved by using Raspberry Pi, as Rosie Hattersley discovered in issue 145 of The MagPi.

Gugusse is a French term meaning something ‘quite flimsy’, explains software engineer and photography fan Denis-Carl Robidoux. The word seemed apt to describe the 3D-printed project: a “flimsy and purely mechanical machine to transfer film.” 

The Gugusse Roller uses Raspberry Pi HQ camera and Pi 4B+ to import and digitise analogue film footage
Image credit: Al Warner

Denis-Carl created Gugusse as a volunteer at the Montreal museum where his girlfriend works. He was “their usual pro bono volunteer guy for anything special with media, [and] they asked me if I could transfer some rolls of 16mm film to digital.” Dissatisfied with the resulting Gugusse Roller mechanism, he eventually decided to set about improving upon it with a little help from Raspberry Pi. Results from the Gugusse Roller’s digitisation process can be admired on YouTube.

New and improved

Denis-Carl brought decades of Linux coding (“since the era when you had to write your own device drivers to make your accessories to work with it”), and a career making drivers for jukeboxes and high-level automation scripts, to the digitisation conundrum. Raspberry Pi clearly offered potential: “Actually, there was no other way to get a picture of this quality at this price level for this DIY project.” However, the Raspberry Pi Camera Module v2 Denis-Carl originally used wasn’t ideal for the macro photography approach and alternative lenses involved in transferring film. The module design was geared up for a lens in close proximity to the camera sensor, and Bayer mosaics aligned for extremities of incoming light were at odds with his needs. “But then came Raspberry Pi HQ camera, which didn’t have the Bayer mosaic alignment issue and was a good 12Mp, enough to perform 4K scans.” 

Gugusse Roller fan Al Warner built his own version
Image credit: Al Warner

Scene stealer

Denis-Carl always intended the newer Gugusse Roller design to be sprocketless, since this would allow it to scan any film format. This approach meant the device needed to be able to detect the film holes optically: “I managed this with an incoming light at 45 degrees and a light sensitive resistor placed at 45 degrees but in the opposite direction.” It was “a Eureka moment” when he finally made it work. Once the tension is set, the film scrolls smoothly past the HQ camera, which captures each frame as a DNG file once the system detects the controlling arms are correctly aligned and after an interval for any vibration to dissipate. 

Version 3.1 of Denis-Carl’s Gugusse Roller PCB

The Gugusse Roller uses Raspberry Pi 4 to control the HQ Camera, three stepper motors, and three GPIO inputs. So far it has scanned thousands of rolls of film, including trailers of classics such as Jaws, and other, lesser-known treasures. The idea has also caught the imagination of more than a dozen followers who have gone on to build their own Gugusse Roller using Denis-Carl’s instructions — check out other makers’ builds on Facebook.

Denis-Carl Robidoux beside his Gugusse Roller film digitiser

The post Gugusse Roller transfers analogue film to digital with Raspberry Pi appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

It’s all hands OFF deck with this Pi-powered LEGO card shuffler

2 October 2024 at 16:14

Who needs to laboriously shuffle their own deck when Raspberry Pi can do it for you? In the latest issue of The MagPi, our recent intern, Louis Wood, tells us all about the nifty LEGO card shuffler he designed during his summer spent in the Maker Lab.

Maker and Cambridge engineering undergraduate Louis Wood first encountered Raspberry Pi while looking for a low-cost microcontroller that could be programmed with Python for an A-level project. Inspiring plenty of envy, he’s just spent six whole weeks ensconced in Raspberry Pi HQ’s very own maker space building a range of Raspberry Pi projects, including a LEGO card shuffler. Basing it around the LEGO Build HAT helped him evolve and improve upon a design that he and his Queens’ College Cambridge friends, Lucas Hoffman and Emily Wang, devised. The card shuffler idea was their response to a design and build challenge, based around a LEGO NXT system, to demonstrate an aspect of engineering science. The dual-motor design was in need of some reworking, which Louis undertook while working as an intern at Raspberry Pi Towers alongside Maker in Residence Toby Roberts.

A MicroPython script takes shuffling out of your hands by spinning these wheels alternately and pushing cards into the shuffled pile at random

Quirky and cool

Louis used a LEGO Spike education kit with Raspberry Pi’s LEGO Build HAT to create a simpler but more robust design. The kit includes cycle motors, which he attached directly to the Build HAT’s four connectors. “The Build HAT made it pretty easy to pick up all the motors and plug them in.” He then programmed Raspberry Pi 4 over SSH, “which made it easy to tweak code.”

The MicroPython code produces either a one or a zero and spins either the left or right motor accordingly: “When the motor turns on, the wheel spins a few cards into the middle.” The motors run on a loop, each powering on for a second or two, pushing cards from each side and randomly shuffling them into a central pile until the Build HAT colour sensors detect the black base of either card bay. The card shuffler then skips that side and only runs the opposite motor for a while to clear the rest of the cards. Once it notices it’s done shuffling, it stops.

The build took a couple of hours, and Louis spent a similar time coding and tweaking the build. “The hardest thing was making it so that it doesn’t just spit out the whole side [of cards] at once,” he says.

His simple-but-effective barrier is positioned such that only a single card at a time can (usually) be shuffled along by the motor. The setup doesn’t always work flawlessly, occasionally requiring the user to deftly flick a card back into place, but Louis aims to improve the design by moving apart the two card holding sides to prevent blockages.

The dynamic Raspberry Pi 4 × Build HAT duo at work

The Build HAT came into its own thanks to the colour sensor Raspberry Pi 4 used to detect whether there were still cards awaiting shuffling. The white background of the cards contrasted with the black base of the crates he’d created, which was visible only when the stack of cards was depleted. Other card decks — such as Uno ones, which usually have a black background — could be shuffled too, as long as the card holder base colour was changed.

Makers gonna make

Two weeks into his internship, Louis had already created and written about a ‘Pixie’ tube clock and had been building “a Raspberry Pi mount and cooling system for one of the engineers upstairs, so you can sort of be running eight Raspberry Pis at the same time, fans, and an enclosure,” as well as a remote control based on the brand-new Pico 2.

Louis’ Pixie clock (Pi-powered Nixie clock) has since been repurposed as a TikTok ‘likes’ counter

Given this prodigious rate of design, we asked whether an engineering career or one as a maker is in his future. “I’d like to be a maker, but I think it’s quite hard…” Louis said. “To be a maker YouTuber takes a lot of work and time, I think… probably a bit risky.”

Read the full story, including some extra tips and projects from maker Louis Wood, in The MagPi #146.

The MagPi #146 out NOW!

You can grab the new issue right now from Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda, WHSmith, and other newsagents, including the Raspberry Pi Store in Cambridge. It’s also available at our online store, which ships around the world. You can also get it via our app on Android or iOS.

The image you provided is the cover of "The MagPi" magazine, issue 146, from October 2024. This magazine is dedicated to Raspberry Pi enthusiasts. The cover design is orange with black and white elements, featuring a retro horror theme. Some of the key elements on the cover include: The main headline, "PLAY RETRO HORROR CLASSICS ON RASPBERRY PI 5," likely highlighting a feature on retro horror games. The text "Police Line Do Not Cross" in several places, adding to the spooky, horror theme, possibly in reference to crime or mystery-themed games. The imagery of a crow, a spooky-looking house, a cassette tape, and various retro gaming motifs, reinforcing the horror and retro gaming aesthetic. Additional highlights like "LEGO Card Shuffler," "Top 10 Spooky Projects," and "Recycle a Fighter Jet Joystick," suggesting other tech and DIY projects featured in this issue. The bottom of the cover mentions "TURN IT UP TO 11 WITH AUDIO UPGRADES," hinting at content related to enhancing audio experiences. The overall theme seems focused on retro horror gaming and tech projects for Raspberry Pi.

You can also subscribe to the print version of The MagPi. Not only do we deliver it globally, but people who sign up to the six- or twelve-month print subscription get a FREE Raspberry Pi Pico W!

The post It’s all hands OFF deck with this Pi-powered LEGO card shuffler appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

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