AI image processing costs

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The Custard Cream Camera sends images to Google Nanobanana for processing. You speak your commands, for example “Add cheese”, and the image and the command are sent over the internet. When I started doing this I was a bit worried about the cost of using AI like this, but it turns out to be bearable. I did a lot of processing at emf, and we’ve been playing with the camera this week, but I’ve only used around six pounds worth of the service. If you fancy having a go with it, don’t let the price put you off.

Custardcream.cam

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I quite like dew-lumen-shell

The Custard Cream Camera is backed by the Custard Cream server, which you can find at: https://custardcream.cam/ The camera has a “publish” command that sends pictures to the server for the whole world wide internet to scrape.

You find pictures by their unique three word address or you can just view random shots. The really interesting thing about this server is that it is running on my desk. I’m using a Raspberry Pi 5 to host everything. It’s connected via a Cloudflared connection which does all the clever mapping between the domain name (custardcream.cam) and the node.js application that hosts the site.

It really is very easy (and surprisingly cheap) to get a web presence using a tiny computer you might already own and a little bit of configuration.

Happy Birthday Me

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I got some nuts as well

Had a splendid birthday today. Started with breakfast in bed plus presents and cards. I’ve been after a “Seagull” lens for a while. And now I’ve got one. I had a nice morning fiddling with code, lunch out and then headed to see The Odyssey movie. It. Was. Awesome. Proper film making on a huge scale. We saw it on a “normal” screen and it looked very good. I’d love to see it on a larger one, or better yet on Imax film. If you are wondering whether it is worth the trip, take the advice I saw at the end of one of the reviews I read. “Find the biggest screen you can and go and see it”.

Having a screw loose

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On the top you can see the Raspberry Pi that controls everything. Underneath is the printer battery holder and the Raspberry Pi HQ camera module.

Every now and then at emf someone would ask me if the nut, bolt or washer they’d found on the floor was from the Custard Cream Camera. It usually was. I’d got everything nice and tight when I built the camera, but the jostling must have worked things loose. Also, I think that PLA (the filament type that I used) tends to deform when compressed, which loosened things. I’m going to have to add some locking nuts and maybe some varnish to hold the parts of the case together.

EMF Day 5

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We were up bright and early to pack up and get on the road. Time taken to pack the bags and get everything together: 20 minutes. Time taken to get folding table back into its bag: 20 minutes.

It has been an amazing event. Best one ever by a considerable margin. The weather helped, as did the huge range of talks and installation, but the best bit for me was the people. Everyone was interesting and interested. There were lots of things I would have love to have gone along to, but I’d have needed several of me to get the most out of the time here. The good news is that a lot of the presentations will find their way onto YouTube so I can take a look at them later.

Huge thanks to everyone who made it possible.

EMF Day 4

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Waking up with the Custard Cream Camera

Today is the last day of EMF. Which is sad. I spent the morning learning about Canbus and the afternoon I went to sessions about the Tildagon badge design and PAL TV amongst other things. Then, in the golden hour just after sunset I took the Custard Cream Camera for a walk and grabbed a bunch of pictures, printed them and handed them out. When the outside light failed I took the camera into the Null Sector nightclub and tried to make it work with the available light there. Which was great fun. Thanks to all my patient subjects.

Sometimes the camera heard “turn into Logo” rather than “turn into lego”

We also went along to the closing ceremony, where all the volunteers took to the stage. There were so many that there was concern that stage wouldn’t support them all. Hundreds of people gave up their time to make this amazing non-profit event. The best news came right at the end, when they told us they were planning for emf in 2028. I’ll be there, with whatever the Custard Cream Camera has turned into by then.

EMF Day 3

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The Otter Plotter

The thing about EMF is that in amongst all the silly things (see above) they also have a whole bunch of serious things (see below).

Virus Talk

Alongside daft creations we had proper hard science and some deep discussions. It is also wonderful to see artists and engineers working together to make the most amazing installations. I’ve never seen so many at an emf before.

I went to a super session about photography which started from first principles and taught me a few things I’d never thought properly about. I was then lucky enough to have a chat with the presenter, try to take their picture with the Custard Cream Camera and totally fail because the LCD panel was impossible to see. Oh well. This is just a super fun place to be. In the evening they had a showing of the movie Apollo 13 using a proper 35mm projector.

This is the projector at the end of the show. That big reel on the left was full of film at the start. Just the sound of the projector firing up and the look of the film were great. And we got the full sound treatment too as they were using the DTS theatre soundtrack. Awesome.

EMF Day 2

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I still remembered “plugh”

We found our way into the arcade tent where they had a teletype running the Colossal Caverns adventure game. It was super nostalgic to press the keys, hear the clunk and see the printed output.

The bar seemed as good a place as any to upgrade the conference badge. For 2026 there is a new badge face and sensor board which much improves the control switches and looks really snazzy. The badge runs apps from the festival App store. I’ve added one called Custard Cream which you can run to view pictures taken by the custard cream camera.

The Custard Cream Camera is working well

They’ve done this rather cunning thing with the Null Sector nightclub this year. They’ve pointed all the speakers away from the camp rather than towards it. This means that it is a lot quieter in bed at night, although I didn’t seem to have any trouble getting to sleep as it turned out.

EMF Day 1

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We got up bright and early today and headed off down the motorway to Electromagnetic Field. The motorways were mostly clear, the weather was mostly very warm. Just the temperatures for carrying tents, groundsheets and Custard Cream Cameras around. Once we had the tent up and everything in place we went out for a walk and to take some pictures. Then we repaired to the Lounge to take a look at what we had, and fiddle with it a bit.

EMF has this rather nice sign. I asked the Custard Cream Camera to put it on the moon.

Then I added a bit more cheese to the event…

…before turning one lucky person into Lego…

Then we headed back to the tent to get things ready for tomorrow. If you want to see these and many other pictures from the event you can go to: https://custardcream.cam/ Just hit the “See a random picture” link to, er, see a random picture.

Using AI to make Rubber Duck Frying Pan Cartoons

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One of the reasons that I created the Custard Cream Camera was to make a device that had built in AI filters. I was inspired by Banamera to create something you could speak commands to. I’ve got it working now. Above is the first ever image processed result. It took a photograph of a large rubber duck in a frying pan and turned it into a cartoon of a large rubber duck in a frying pan.

This is going to go down well at EMF….

The Custard Cream Camera Lives!

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The camera with a duck and a printed picture of the duck

Please don’t ask me why it is called the “Custard Cream Camera”. Just take a look at the box and use your imagination. Anyhoo, it is now mostly complete and working. I’ve no idea how reliable it is or what will happen when I throw it in a tent and then go round taking snaps of happy festival goes.

But we’ll find out later this week.

It has a user interface and everything

Printing Trees

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I thought the support trees that you get when 3D printing looked too good to throw away….

This is how the centre box of the Custard Cream Camera case was printed. The amazing thing is that the camera hole and the camera supports (which you can see at the back of the picture) came out perfectly in spite of the way that the supports were printed as horizontal objects. This experience has cured me of any concerns about using support in prints. It really does just work. Very impressed.