MacStories’ Federico Viticci has used a shiny new characteristic of iPadOS 17 to carry again a very-much-not-new video system for FaceTime use: Nintendo’s Recreation Boy Digital camera, a grayscale snapshot accent launched in 1998 for the Recreation Boy household of handheld consoles.
“A significant change launched by iPadOS 17 that’s going to make video creators and players joyful is assist for UVC (USB Video Class) gadgets, which implies an iPad can now acknowledge exterior webcams, cameras, video acquisition playing cards, and different gadgets related over USB-C,” Viticci explains of his venture.
A brand new characteristic of iPadOS 17 allows you to use UVC gadgets for FaceTime calls — together with, in case you’re sensible about it, a classic Recreation Boy Digital camera. (📹: Federico Vicci)
“I began testing iPadOS 17 considering this is able to be a boring addition I’d by no means use; because it seems, it’s the place I had probably the most enjoyable tinkering with completely different items of {hardware} this summer season,” Viticci continues. “Most of all, nonetheless, I didn’t anticipate I’d find yourself doing FaceTime calls with a Recreation Boy Digital camera as my iPad Professional’s webcam.”
Launched in 1998 as an adjunct for the Nintendo Recreation Boy vary of handheld consoles and appropriate with the non-obligatory Recreation Boy Printer, the Recreation Boy digicam allowed the consumer to seize low-res pictures on a 128×128 CMOS sensor — although these had been cropped in software program to 128×112, and saved utilizing the four-gray palette of the unique Recreation Boy.
Regardless of, or extra doubtless due to, its low constancy, the Recreation Boy Digital camera has turn out to be one thing of an iconic system — and has impressed tasks like Michael Fitzmayer’s CMOS Holga, Christopher Graves’ Recreation Boy Digital camera M, and Bastiaan Ekeler’s Canon lens mount. Viticci, although, had one other thought in thoughts: utilizing it as a webcam for FaceTime video calls, in all its two-bit blocky glory.
“I’ve an Analogue Pocket, which is an excellent fashionable tackle the Recreation Boy that may play authentic Recreation Boy cartridges. I even have the Analogue Pocket dock, which lets me play Recreation Boy video games on a giant display screen by benefiting from the Pocket’s wonderful upscaling mode for Recreation Boy graphics,” Viticci explains. “If I might use the Recreation Boy Digital camera on a Pocket and ship the video feed from the console to the iPad Professional, would I then be capable to do a FaceTime name with somebody whereas trying like a personality straight out of a Recreation Boy sport? The reply, my pricey readers, is an excellent, resounding Sure.”
The key to the venture’s success: an Analogue Pocket, which makes use of FPGAs to replace basic consoles with new options like upscaled video outputs. (📷: Federico Vicci)
Connecting the Analogue dock to an Elgato Cam Hyperlink seize dongle, which in flip connects to the iPad, Viticci was in a position to coax dwell video out of the system — and whereas it consists of the Recreation Boy Digital camera’s software program management overlay, it additionally helps Facetime’s video results overlays — recognizing gestures and enjoying high-quality full-color animations over the grayscale low-res video feed.
“That’s once I actually misplaced it. There I used to be, performing gestures in entrance of a Recreation Boy Digital camera in 2023 to check video seize and FaceTime on an iPad Professional,” Viticci writes. “None of this is sensible, and no common individual will ever want to make use of this. And but, one way or the other, the truth that every little thing labored because it was imagined to stuffed me a wierd sense of peace and nerd satisfaction.”
Viticci’s full venture write-up is offered on his MacStories website.
