Tips and tricks

Here you find a collection of useful tips and tricks for your photobooth.

Start photobooth directly (instead of showing welcome/settings screen)

To start the photobooth directly (i.e., such that it is ready to use) instead of showing the welcome screen first, simply add --run to your start command, for example:

/home/pi/photobooth/.venv/bin/python -m photobooth --run

Autostart application on Raspberry Pi

To make the photobooth to run automatically when booting your Raspberry Pi, you can use the provided autostart.sh script.

If you installed the photobooth in folder /home/pi/photobooth, simply add the following line to the file /home/pi/.config/lxsession/LXDE-pi/autostart to activate the autostart:

@/home/pi/photobooth/autostart.sh

This will automatically run the application when booting the system. If the file /home/pi/.config/lxsession/LXDE-pi/autostart is missing, simply create folders and files as required.

You can combine this with the direct startup explained above by adding --run in autostart.sh.

Add logo/text to final image

If you want to add a logo/text to the final image (e.g., names and wedding date) simply create a background image with the relevant data. This gives you all the freedom in selecting different fonts, adding pictures etc.

Additionally, you can omit the last picture (e.g., when using a 2x2 layout, this will create a final picture consisting of 3 shots with the bottom right corner empty) to have plenty of space to add names and dates large enough to read.

Switch to development branch

Git has excellent support for branching (read the relevant chapter of the great Git book for some details), which allows us to keep the master branch as stable as possible and restrict all development work to a separate branch (called development). Once changes have been tested for a while they will be merged to the master branch.

If you encounter any issues we might ask you to try out a fixed version of the code, which resides in the development branch. These two options for obtaining this code version usually are the easiest:

1. Switch local branch to development

The first option is to switch to the development branch in your existing working copy. This is the fastest if you have not applied any changes to the code as it allows you to keep all other installed dependencies. Open a terminal and change directory to your local copy of the code. Then run the following command

git checkout --track origin/development

If you made any local changes, Git will ask you to stash them first - if you know what you are doing go ahead and do so (or read up on it), otherwise I recommend to try out the second option.

2. Clone a new copy

This is probably the easiest solution. Simply clone a new copy of the code with the following command:

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

You will now have a clean copy of the code in the new directory photobooth_development. You will now have to create a new virtual environment and reinstall all dependencies!