The results may look childish, but what the ‘Draw This’ camera manages to do is quite smart, as it mimics what we as humans do when we practice real-life sketches.
Tapping into Google’s repository of doodles from its Quick Draw project back in 2016, the Draw This camera uses a tiny camera lens module, a Raspberry Pi computer, and a thermal printer to capture images, detect the objects within them, and doodle/print them out for you, turning the concept of the Polaroid into something that’s more quirky, fun, and can sometimes be a hilarious hit-and-miss!
“One of the fun things about this re-imagined camera is that you never get to see the original image. You point, and shoot – and out pops a cartoon; the camera’s best interpretation of what it saw. The result is always a surprise. A food selfie of a healthy salad might turn into an enormous hotdog, or a photo with friends might be photobombed by a goat.”, says creator Dan Macnish, who’s made the code for the Draw This camera public on GitHub, so tinkerers and makers can create their own versions of the camera. Would make a great addition to a game of Pictionary, wouldn’t it??
Designer: Dan Macnish
