How to Apply Random Image Effects With Raspberry Pi Camera

The Raspberry Pi Camera is great fun to play with. It can be used for silly photos, stop motion animation and for computer vision projects.

To introduce how to use the camera as part of a Bash script we are going to use the camera with a push button that will choose a random filter for the image. Some of these filters enhance the image, some alter it to be a cartoon others create artistic effects.

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$ raspistill -o test.jpg

#!/bin/bash

echo "17" > /sys/class/gpio/export
echo "in" > /sys/class/gpio/gpio17/direction

array[0]="none"
array[1]="negative"
array[2]="solarise"
array[3]="sketch"
array[4]="denoise"
array[5]="emboss"
array[6]="oilpant"
array[7]="hatch"
array[8]="gpen"
array[9]="pastel"
array[10]="watercolour"
array[11]="film"
array[12]="blur"
array[13]="saturation"
array[14]="colourswap"
array[15]="washedout"
array[16]="posterise"
array[17]="colourpoint"
array[18]="colourbalance"
array[19]="cartoon"

size=${#array[@]}

while true; do

index=$(($RANDOM % $size))

echo ${array[$index]}

data="$(cat /sys/class/gpio/gpio17/value)"

 if [ ${data} = "1" ]; then

TIME=$(date +"%Y-%m-%d_%H%M%S")

raspistill -ifx ${array[$index]} -o $TIME.jpg

 fi
done

#!/bin/bash
echo "17" > /sys/class/gpio/export
echo "in" > /sys/class/gpio/gpio17/direction
array[0]="none"
array[1]="negative"
array[2]="solarise"
array[3]="sketch"
array[4]="denoise"
array[5]="emboss"
array[6]="oilpant"
array[7]="hatch"
array[8]="gpen"
array[9]="pastel"
array[10]="watercolour"
array[11]="film"
array[12]="blur"
array[13]="saturation"
array[14]="colourswap"
array[15]="washedout"
array[16]="posterise"
array[17]="colourpoint"
array[18]="colourbalance"
array[19]="cartoon"
size=${#array[@]}
while true; do
  index=$(($RANDOM % $size))
  echo ${array[$index]}
  data="$(cat /sys/class/gpio/gpio17/value)"
  if [ ${data} = "1" ]; then
    TIME=$(date +"%Y-%m-%d_%H%M%S")
    raspistill -ifx ${array[$index]} -o $TIME.jpg
  fi
done

$ chmod +x random-art.sh

./random-art.sh

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Les Pounder is an associate editor at Tom's Hardware. He is a creative technologist and for seven years has created projects to educate and inspire minds both young and old. He has worked with the Raspberry Pi Foundation to write and deliver their teacher training program "Picademy".

How to Apply Random Image Effects With Raspberry Pi Camera

Setting up a Raspberry Pi Camera

Wiring up a Button

Writing the Code for Raspberry Pi Random Images

Complete Code Listing

Run the code