I built a “photo booth” for a Halloween party we hosted in 2023. It took a picture every 10 minutes, counted down by a timer on a screen. I hacked the thing together with random components I had in the wire box (I bet you have one too), and it turned out to be a hit at the party. As the countdown neared 0, groups would gather in front of the camera and pose. The photos uploaded straight to Discord, which people could access by scanning the QR code on the screen.
Components
- Lepow 15.6" portable monitor: the screen, powered over USB-C.
- Logitech C920x Pro HD webcam: the camera, borrowed from my Zoom setup for the night.
- Raspberry Pi 4 Model B: runs the capture script and posts each photo to Discord.
- A full-size camera tripod, two USB-C cables, and a couple of USB power adapters, all just whatever was already lying around.
The software
The Pi was already running a Linux desktop, so there was no OS work to do, just a quick React app on top of it. It talks straight to a Discord webhook to post each photo, no backend server in between. Before it uploads, the photo gets compressed and encoded as base64 so it can ride along in the webhook payload itself. The app itself is just a full screen web page, with Chromium running in kiosk mode so it’s the only thing on screen. When a picture gets taken, the screen flashes white at full brightness for a beat, standing in for a flash the webcam doesn’t have.
