Sunday, August 26, 2012

Shoop! : Raspberry Pi - powered Photo Souvenir Printer


When I started selling my first software almost 3 years ago (DarkoomEX Photobooth Software) and my second a year after that (PhotoGrabber) and saw that there's a very huge market for photo-souvenir solutions, I became more and more interested with further innovating the  business and offering fresh solutions to the market.  And when I got my hands on a $35 raspberry pi, a light bulb went on and Shoop! was born.

Shoop! is the first raspberry pi-powered photo souvenir printer that receives photo-uploads via Wi-Fi from any smart phone.  A pre-designed template will then be applied to the uploaded photos and will automatically be printed like any event photo-booth does.  Design templates can be customized to fit any party, event, tourist destination or establishment.  Shoop! can also be configured to use multiple design templates which can be applied to each photo in random or in order for a different output on each print.  Management of design-templates and captured photos as well as some basic configurations are done via FTP.  It's a print studio-in-a-box!

Pretty much all the main functions of Shoop! are shown on the following video.  However, other bits including security and template designing are not.  



The pi has DHCP, HTTP, MySQL and FTP servers installed.  This is the first version of the project, more of a proof-of-concept thing. I'm still working on making it perform faster, simplifying the set-up and adding a few more features including an e-mail to print functions.  Of course all the equipment will be enclosed in a portable and more presentable case when it's finalized.



* iPhone uploads are done using the jailbreak app 'Safari Upload Enabler'.  iOS 6 apparently has this feature enabled when it's released.

*  Please forgive the kid running in the background on the video, he's my very playful 3yo son. 

Saturday, August 25, 2012

A New Start

To be honest, I already lost count of how many times I've tried making a blog and force myself to find the time to update it regularly.  Well, by this time you know that I failed.. big time!  But here I am again, but this time with a good purpose.

Since I started doing freelance works years ago, I had no way to showcase my creations.  I also learned tons of new stuffs along the way that I thought is worth sharing so I was forced inspired to start a new blog specifically for that purpose.  So, here we go again... let's get it on!