Storing camera images on a cassette tape, SSTV style

Here is a lovely piece of retro-tech silliness: a camera that saves its pictures on an ordinary audio cassette instead of an SD card. The build comes from Jordan Blanchard.

An ESP32 with a camera module takes the picture, and a small screen shows a live preview while you frame the shot. The digital image is then turned into analog audio and recorded onto the tape, using the slow-scan television (SSTV) idea that radio amateurs have used for decades to send pictures as sound.

Playback is handled by an RP2040, which captures the audio as the tape runs and rebuilds the image. It uses several tricks to keep the reconstruction faithful to the original, and an optional serial connection lets a computer take care of the final processing step. The pictures keep the unmistakable SSTV look, which comes from the analog medium itself. The cassette deck is custom built too.

The write-up doesn't list image resolution, tape speed or transfer times, so those details are left to the project page. Even so, I enjoy the way it treats a cassette as a data medium again. For anyone who collects decks, it is a reminder that these machines can still do surprising things.

Source: Hackaday