The Alulu Camera is a camera that takes a picture and instantly prints it out, just like a Polaroid camera. It uses thermal paper so you can take cheap, carefree black and white photos for a low cost. You can even use old receipts as film. I built this camera from the ground up with two friends and we launched it on Kickstarter, raising $20,887.
By using thermal paper, the Alulu Camera can print off pictures for <$0.01 each while a standard Polaroid camera will cost $0.50 per image. Additionally, the chemicals used in Polaroid Cameras use gelatin made from animals while the film used in the Alulu Camera is vegan. The Alulu Camera can also use old receipts as film allowing you to put images over your old purchases. Receipts are not recyclable so using the Alulu Camera is a great way to turn these pieces of trash into fun memories!
Version 1.0
May 2019 - Aug 2019
I was the lead mechanical and electrical engineer on the team. I designed the body of the camera in Fusion 360 and 3D printed it. I also designed the electrical wiring system for the camera. It uses a Raspberry Pi to control a thermal printer and is powered with two 18650 batteries. Buttons and potentiometers are connected to the Raspberry Pi via a PCB breakout board I designed in KiCad. Over two months, we built three working prototype Alulu Cameras.
Version 2.0
Feb 2020 - Present
As a Covid-19 quarantine project, I sought to improve the Alulu Camera and design a new one from the ground up using my knowledge gained in ME218. Instead of using a Raspberry Pi, I wanted to used an ARM microcontroller. I also wanted to replace the interface board for the thermal printer with one of my own design as this would allow me to write drivers that enable the printer to print greyscale, rather than only black and white.
Greyscale image printed on the new Alulu Camera 
The new Alulu Camera schematic and PCB were designed in KiCad. The PCB is a four layer PCB with an STM32 microcontroller, camera, thermal printer, and the other components needed to interact with this components as well as buttons/LEDs for the user interface. This camera has been built and the hardware is proven to work; now what is left is to write the remaining code.
