photobooth/INSTALL.md

Installation instructions

These instructions are tailored towards running the photobooth on a Raspberry Pi (tested on 1B+ and 3B+). However, I use my standard Ubuntu Laptop (16.04) with the built-in webcam and OpenCV for development and as such, the app should work on any other hardware just as well. Simply skip the Raspberry Pi specific installation parts.

Install Raspbian and configure it

This is just for my own reference and maybe useful, if you have a similar hardware setup. Skip this, if you have your hardware already up and running.

Install Raspbian Desktop

Choose Raspbian Desktop instead of the Lite flavor, which might lack some packages required for the GUI.

Download and installation instructions are available at the Raspberry Pi website

Configure and update Raspbian

Boot up the Raspberry Pi for the first time and open a terminal (press Ctrl+Alt+T). Enter the following to update everything to the latest version:

sudo rpi-update
sudo apt update
sudo apt dist-upgrade

Afterwards, open the configuration utility to adapt everything to your needs (e.g., setup WiFi, hostname, etc.)

sudo rpi-config

Configure touch screen, printer etc.

Configure any not working hardware, e.g., my touch screen needs some additional steps since some of the latest Raspbian releases. See the instructions at the end for my hardware setup.

If you plan on using a printer, make sure it is configured as default printer!

Install dependencies for the photobooth

These dependencies are required to run the application. You might be able to skip some packages if you plan on not using

Install required packages

In a terminal, enter the following commands

sudo apt install python3-dev python3-pip virtualenv  
sudo apt install qt5-default pyqt5-dev pyqt5-dev-tools # for PyQt5-GUI
sudo apt install gphoto2 libgphoto2-dev # to use gphoto2
sudo apt install libffi6 libffi-dev # for gphoto2-cffi bindings

Remove some files to get gphoto2 working

Raspbian ships with a utility called gvfs to allow mounting cameras as virtual file systems. This enables you to access some camera models as if they were USB storage drives, however, it interferes with our use of the camera, as the operating system then claims exclusive access to the camera. Thus, we have to disable these functionalities.

Note: This might break file manager access etc. for some camera models.

To remove these files, enter the following in a terminal:

sudo rm /usr/share/dbus-1/services/org.gtk.vfs.GPhoto2VolumeMonitor.service
sudo rm /usr/share/gvfs/mounts/gphoto2.mount
sudo rm /usr/share/gvfs/remote-volume-monitors/gphoto2.mount
sudo rm /usr/lib/gvfs/gvfs-gphoto2-volume-monitor
sudo rm /usr/lib/gvfs/gvfsd-gphoto2

You should reboot afterwards to make sure these changes are effective.

Install photobooth

These are the steps to install the application.

Clone the Photobooth repository

Run the following command to obtain the source code:

git clone -b development https://github.com/reuterbal/photobooth

This will create a folder photobooth with all necessary files.

Initialize virtualenv

To avoid installing everything on a system level, I recommend to initialize a virtual environment. For that, enter the folder created in the previous step

cd photobooth

and run the following command

virtualenv -p python3 --system-site-packages .venv

Activate the virtual environment. You have to do this whenever you open a new terminal or rebooted your hardware

source .venv/bin/activate

Install photobooth with dependencies

Run the following command to download and install all dependencies and the photobooth:

pip install -e .

Run Photobooth

If not yet done, activate your virtual environment

source .venv/bin/activate

and run the photobooth as

python photobooth

Additional setup steps for my hardware setup

Pollin LS-7T touch screen

Install required packages

apt install xinput-calibrator xserver-xorg-input-evdev

Configure device

Add the following to /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/99-eGalax.conf:

Section "InputClass"
    Identifier "evdev tablet catchall"
    MatchIsTablet "on"
    MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"
    Driver "evdev"
EndSection

Section "InputClass"
    Identifier      "calibration"
    MatchProduct    "eGalax Inc. Touch"
    Option  "Calibration"   "19 1988 96 1965"
    Option  "SwapAxes"      "0"
EndSection

The calibration data can be obtained using xinput-calibrator.

Canon SELPHY CP1200/CP1300 printer

Add buster/testing repository

We need Gutenprint 5.2.13 or newer, unfortunately Raspbian Stretch includes only Gutenprint 5.2.11. Luckily, the next distro (Buster) includes an up-to-date version and thus we can install that one instead of compiling the drivers ourselves.

For that, we add the buster repositories with a lower priority (to avoid an upgrade of all packages) and select them later manually, when installing the drivers.

Create file /etc/apt/preferences.d/stretch.pref with content

Package: *
Pin: release n=stretch
Pin-Priority: 900

Create file /etc/apt/preferences.d/buster.pref with content

Package: *
Pin: release n=buster
Pin-Priority: 750

Add the following line to /etc/apt/sources.list:

deb http://mirrordirector.raspbian.org/raspbian/ buster main contrib non-free rpi

Install Gutenprint printer drivers

With the up-to-date drivers available, we install them with the following command:

apt update
apt install printer-driver-gutenprint -t buster

Add user pi to group lpadmin

To allow the current user to modify printer settings we must add it to the group lpadmin:

sudo usermod -a -G lpadmin pi

Plug in printer to USB port and add in CUPS

• Plug in the printer.
• Open http://localhost:631 on the Raspberry Pi.
• Select 'Add Printer' in the Tab 'Administration'
• When asked, enter credentials for user pi
• The printer should be offered somewhere close to the top of the list in the section 'Local Printers'. Select it and click 'Continue'.
• If you wish, you can specify a name in the next step.
• In the last step, select the appropriate model in the list. For the Canon SELPHY CP1300 the printer for the CP1200 works fine as the CP1300 is the same printer with a larger screen and some smartphone baublery.
• Click "Add Printer". This concludes the installation.
• In the following dialogue, you can modify the default settings.

Select default printer

It is important that you set the printer as the default printer. For that, go to the CUPS administration interface (http://localhost:631), open the list of printers and select your printer. In the drop-down menu 'Administration' select 'Set as Server Default'.