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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 (18.04) 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 lacks 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

Disable screensaver/screen blanking

By default, Raspbian blanks the screen after ten minutes of idle time. You probably do not want that for a photobooth, thus it is best to disable this.

For that, edit /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf and change the startup command to the following:

xserver-command=X -s 0 -dpms

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 gphoto2.

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 libcups2-dev # to use pycups

If you want to use the gphoto2-cffi bindings you have to install the following packages:

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 https://github.com/reuterbal/photobooth.git

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 .

Some dependencies are optional and must be included explicitly if you plan on using them. For that, change the above command to (note the lack of a whitespace after the dot)

pip install -e .[extras]

and replace extras by a comma separated list (without whitespaces!) of the desired options. These include:

  • pyqt if you want to install PyQt5 from PIP (doesn't work on Raspbian)
  • picamera if you want to use the Raspberry Pi camera module
  • gphoto2-cffi if you want to use the gphoto2-cffi bindings

Run Photobooth

If not yet done, activate your virtual environment

source .venv/bin/activate

and run the photobooth as

python -m photobooth

Alternatively, use the Python binary of the virtual environment to start the photobooth directly without activating the environment first:

.venv/bin/python -m photobooth

This is useful, e.g., when starting the photobooth from scripts, desktop shortcuts, or when using an autostart mechanism of your window manager.

Change any settings via the "Settings" menu. Afterwards, select "Start photobooth" to get started. You can trigger the countdown via space bar or an external button.

To exit the application, use the Esc-key or an external button.

You can directly startup the photobooth to the idle screen (skipping the welcome screen) by appending the parameter --run.