
Draw This: a polaroid camera that draws cartoons - neuhaus
http://danmacnish.com/2018/07/01/draw-this/
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gregschlom
6 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.

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w1
This 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)

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manmal
I 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-r...](https://cen.acs.org/articles/95/i35/Touching-thermal-paper-
receipts-extend.html)

~~~
Nerks234
Do you have a suggestion for an alternative printer?

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joshvm
The 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.

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voycey
Anyone else think of this from the title?

[https://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/Iconograph](https://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/Iconograph)

~~~
disqard
Yes! Thank you for the link :)

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tristanho
Wow, 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 :)

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mdonahoe
I recommend starting with an app...

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tristanho
Given 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-re...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/fujifilm-zooms-in-on-instaxs-retro-appeal-in-the-digital-age-1459405636)

I think I'd have to disagree here!

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evan_
OTOH 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
It's probably gonna be for the gift market. Also parties, weddings etc, keep
one on each table for fun

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svilen_dobrev
reminds me of the Twoflower's camera+dwarf from the Pratchet's Discworld.. :)

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Xcelerate
I would totally buy this. I bet many other people would as well...

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sAbakumoff
I bet many people would use this device one or two times and then abandon it
forever. It's useless

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jakobegger
The same could be said about books.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Which are usually made from recycled material, and can easily be recycled.

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GistNoesis
Very 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.

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aantix
Any image examples?

~~~
GistNoesis
Sorry, 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.

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sleepychu
From 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
:-)

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dalbasal
This is fun. I want one. Kickstarter?

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randop
This 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

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amelius
I expected a 3d printed Cartesian robot holding a pen, for the printer part.

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Theodores
I 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
Or 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
...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.

~~~
yorwba
It can be as challenging as you want it to be. Each of the components offers
infinite options for recursion. How does the camera lens create a picture? How
does the computer make a drawing? How does the printer put a picture on paper?
And how do we put this thing back together after taking it apart?

I think the major reason why parents prefer stories about Father Christmas is
that they are familiar with the concept of a white-bearded guy climbing down
chimneys to leave presents, but they could not explain how a factory robot
works or how feedback loops in financial markets can lead to oscillation.

Of course you have to make sure the child is actually interested, but if it
wants to know about the camera in TFA, then redirecting that interest towards
a story about autistic squirrels just because _you_ happen to find that
hilarious doesn't seem like such a nice thing to me.

~~~
Theodores
The dull science lecture approach may be suited to a mature teenage who is
just about to sit their physics, maths and computer science exams.

However, it is important to give younger children stories such as Father
Christmas, the Tooth Fairy and the like to stimulate their creativity and
play. Not one single book in a primary school library is fact based. Children
do not seem to be damaged by this. Nobody grows up mentally scarred because
they learn that Santa is not real, with chips on their shoulders because they
have been betrayed by their lying parents.

Fun is allowed and it does not have to be boring, mandatory, tedious lectures
that daddy thinks are more 'educational'. Some people don't move on from
playing games, some people will instinctively want to hack games and write
their own. Furby style toys are okay, bags of resistors with instructions to
build your own are not for all age groups.

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icebraining
I have no problem with telling fictional stories to kids, but I also disagree
with your portrayal of fictional wonder vs dull lecture. Reality doesn't have
to be dull. Carl Sagan's _Cosmos_ has been seen by 500M people and many people
who were kids then still remember being glued to the TV, fascinated by the
science.

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StavrosK
As someone who was fascinated much more by how circuits work than "it's
magic", I agree with you.

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sebringj
This 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.

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Nerks234
Anybody 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)

