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Draw This: a polaroid camera that draws cartoons
- gregschlom 8y ago6 years ago someone made this: http://mattrichardson.com/Descriptive-Camera/ http://mattrichardson.com/Descriptive-Camera/ It uses Mechanical Turk. Pretty incredible to see that in 6 short years neural networks have made an automated version of essentially the same idea possible.
- w1 8y agoThis project is still using crowd-sourced sketches though. It's automating the object detection and localization, then placing a sketch of that object in that location, selected at random from the Google QuickDraw dataset. https://github.com/googlecreativelab/quickdraw-dataset https://github.com/googlecreativelab/quickdraw-dataset
- zepolen 8y agoThat camera can tell you what the Sistine Chapel looks like - but it can't tell you why you were there, or the importance of the photo. Sure that cupboard in the article might look ugly, but it was the first completed DIY project for the camera man. Image that sort of context getting applied by AI...
- tristanho 8y agoWow, this is just such a great idea. Dan (author) if you're reading these comments, you should definitely sell these cameras as a product. Also would love to see some side-by-sides of an actual image and the Draw This photo. EDIT: installing the project locally right now -- will see if I can generate some side-by-sides :)
- jerezzprime 8y agoI very much want to see side by side samples. Also the ability to buy would be pretty cool.
- mdonahoe 8y agoI recommend starting with an app...
- tristanho 8y agoGiven these cameras are: * Fairly easy to make, a la github instructions * Can command a _very steep_ margin per sale, compared to an app * Offer (imo) most of the product value by being something physical/tangible you can show to your friends * Polaroid cameras are surprisingly popular https://www.wsj.com/articles/fujifilm-zooms-in-on-instaxs-retro-appeal-in-the-digital-age-1459405636 https://www.wsj.com/articles/fujifilm-zooms-in-on-instaxs-re... I think I'd have to disagree here!
- evan_ 8y agoOTOH if it’s even mildly successful someone will clone it in app form within a week anyway, which will almost certainly crush hardware sales. (Why pay $99 for a gimmicky camera when a $1 app does basically the same thing? All my friends are on Instagram anyway.) I say just get the app out there first and try to make up for the lower price per unit with volume. If it becomes truly popular and there’s demand for physical prints then rebadge and sell a commodity Bluetooth printer.
- whatsstolat 8y agoIt's probably gonna be for the gift market. Also parties, weddings etc, keep one on each table for fun
- function_seven 8y agoAn app that does this would lose its novelty pretty quickly I think. The delight comes from a black box spitting out a physical piece of paper with the drawing on it. I mean, that might also lose novelty after a few uses, but it would always be a conversation starter and a cool thing to leave on your coffee table.
- amelius 8y agoThere are already many deep-learning based image processing apps, including ones that apply style transfer.
- empath75 8y agoGet the Flintstones license, make it look like it was carved in rock by a dinosaur inside the camera.
- emptyfile 8y agoYeah I'd buy this as a gift in a heartbeat
- Xcelerate 8y agoI would totally buy this. I bet many other people would as well...
- sAbakumoff 8y agoI bet many people would use this device one or two times and then abandon it forever. It's useless
- k_ 8y agoWhat about children? With an appropriate case, it can become a great toy.
- sAbakumoff 8y agoNothing to say...children are weird!
- jakobegger 8y agoThe same could be said about books.
- sAbakumoff 8y agoIt depends on a book.
- pbhjpbhj 8y agoWhich are usually made from recycled material, and can easily be recycled.
- Reedx 8y agoThat's probably true, but it's the same pattern with most things people buy. Especially toys and gadgets. Gets used once or twice and then sits on a shelf or in a closet.
- notheguyouthink 8y agoI think I'd use it more if the drawings were far more detailed, but still kept that napkin drawing look. Though tbh, I'd vastly prefer a printer that just did this, not a camera. Then I can take normal photos with my phone, maybe even preview what the drawing might look like, and then print it with the draw printer.
- voycey 8y agoAnyone else think of this from the title? https://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/Iconograph https://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/Iconograph
- disqard 8y agoYes! Thank you for the link :)
- sebringj 8y agoThis is fantastic and hilarious and clever. They could apply this to sponsor a child charities to increase donation frequency, duration and amount by having it draw pictures and write back in a very personal and child-like way based on donor sent pictures and letters. Your welcome.
- Theodores 8y agoI think this is awesome. My '2 cents' - stretch the imagination of the impressionable by implying that there is a 'little man' inside the box. 'How does it work daddy?' 'Well son, there is a little man inside the box...' - my dad, circa some many decades ago, standard answer. Actually my grandma on the other side of the family fully believed such things but that is another story. You need not have a 'little man' inside the box, you could go with 'Kevin the autistic squirrel' or maybe something a bit more politically correct. You could even add temperament that way so the parent could explain with some credible make believe why 'Kevin' has drawn something random. Maybe add the randomness in so 'Kevin' gets bored/tired/petulant on occasion, adding in doodles or perhaps loving/kind words. Awareness of the purchaser's birthday and current location could add to the fun, to draw a side drawing of the Eiffel Tower if on holiday in Paris, rain clouds if it is raining etc. The fun to be had...
- yorwba 8y agoOr just give an actual explanation. The truth doesn't have to be boring. "In this hole here is the camera lens. When you point it at something and press the button, the camera takes a picture. Then a little computer in here turns the picture into a drawing, and then the printer puts the drawing on paper, which comes out here." Bonus points for doing a teardown to show the parts. Kids can be just as impressed by the real world as by made-up stories, and even things learned in early childhood can have long-lasting effects. For example, once I was sitting in physics class listening to the teacher and suddenly had a flashback of my father giving a much better explanation of the same thing when I was maybe 5 years old.
- Theodores 8y ago...but you know that would not be challenging. Why would you want to 'steal' the camera and surreptitiously take it apart AND put it back together again if things were fully explained in an adult way? There is a good reason why we tell children about Father Christmas and don't tell them the truth of the realities of modern manufacturing techniques, the intricacies of finances and such like.
- svilen_dobrev 8y agoreminds me of the Twoflower's camera+dwarf from the Pratchet's Discworld.. :)
- manmal 8y agoI really like this. If you are concerned about BPA exposure, you might rethink the thermal printer: https://cen.acs.org/articles/95/i35/Touching-thermal-paper-receipts-extend.html https://cen.acs.org/articles/95/i35/Touching-thermal-paper-r...
- Nerks234 8y agoDo you have a suggestion for an alternative printer?
- joshvm 8y agoThe printer isn't the problem, it's just a heater. The problem is the paper. You can get BPA-free paper, though it seems like the standard replacement is just as bad (it contains BPS). There is a Vitamin C-derived paper by a company called Appvion. You can buy it on Amazon but apparently it's not great.
- password4321 8y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17010361 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17010361
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- sleepychu 8y agoFrom the github project: > close the app using cntrl-C once the downloads have finished. Weird that you can't detect this and bail out but I guess it's just a one-shot :-)
- GistNoesis 8y agoVery fun. Nice idea and execution. I like how minimalist it looks. It has a kind of GameBoy camera vibe, but with neural networks. Last year, I realized a "polaroid" photobooth robot which does some neural art style transfer. https://github.com/GistNoesis/Linn-Photobooth https://github.com/GistNoesis/Linn-Photobooth . It's kind of the opposite approach in term of complexity, but it's fun nonetheless. Hopefully they could be unified when the more powerful Raspberry Model 8b+ is out in a few years.
- aantix 8y agoAny image examples?
- GistNoesis 8y agoSorry, I had no more paper when it was time to do the videos, so you'll have to imagine it from the video demo images. Format is postcard, quality is postcard level with optional borders. Printer is specified, so you can see plenty of video of it printing.
- dalbasal 8y agoThis is fun. I want one. Kickstarter?
- Nerks234 8y agoAnybody know how to get past the import error when trying to run cartoonify on MacOS?: ImportError: cannot import name run, discussed here: https://github.com/danmacnish/cartoonify/issues/5 https://github.com/danmacnish/cartoonify/issues/5
- amelius 8y agoI expected a 3d printed Cartesian robot holding a pen, for the printer part.
- randop 8y agoThis is fun. It would be awesome if it can piece together the body so that it would not look like floating t-shirt and pants :D