MacStories’ Federico Viticci has used a shiny new function of iPadOS 17 to convey again a very-much-not-new video machine 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 avid gamers completely satisfied is assist for UVC (USB Video Class) gadgets, which suggests an iPad can now acknowledge exterior webcams, cameras, video acquisition playing cards, and different gadgets related over USB-C,” Viticci explains of his challenge.
A brand new function of iPadOS 17 allows you to use UVC gadgets for FaceTime calls — together with, when you’re good about it, a classic Recreation Boy Digital camera. (📹: Federico Vicci)
“I began testing iPadOS 17 considering this might 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 elective Recreation Boy Printer, the Recreation Boy digital camera allowed the person to seize low-res photographs 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 machine — 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 concept 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 impressive 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 an enormous display screen by profiting from the Pocket’s glorious 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 of do a FaceTime name with somebody whereas wanting like a personality straight out of a Recreation Boy recreation? The reply, my pricey readers, is an excellent, resounding Sure.”
The key to the challenge’s success: an Analogue Pocket, which makes use of FPGAs to replace traditional 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 stay video out of the machine — and whereas it contains 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 after I really 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 all the things labored because it was purported to crammed me an odd sense of peace and nerd satisfaction.”
Viticci’s full challenge write-up is out there on his MacStories website.