Quick start#

Hardware requirements#

  • Raspberry Pi 4 or 5 (>2GB RAM).
  • Official HQ or Global Shutter camera
  • HDMI monitor or a phone/tablet for monitoring

Installation#

Burn the latest Cinemate image to an SD card.

Connect the Pi and the camera sensor board, connect power and boot the Pi. Cinemate autostarts on boot.

Ensure the Pi is powered off before attaching the camera ribbon cable. Hot-swapping may damage the hardware.

Preview#

  • Plug in an HDMI monitor or
  • Connect your phone/tablet to the Wi‑Fi network CinePi (password 11111111). Open a browser and go to cinepi.local:5000 to see the interface. A clean video feed without the GUI is available at cinepi.local:8000/stream.

Recording#

  • Attach a high‑speed drive: an SSD (Samsung T7 recommended), an NVMe drive, or the CFE Hat. Make sure storage media is formatted as exFAT and labeled RAW.

  • Connect a button between GPIO7 and GND — physical pins 26 and 25, right next to each other, so you can also briefly short them with a paper clip. When using the phone preview, you can also start/stop recording by tapping the preview. More buttons and dials can be added later — see Additional hardware.

That's it—your bare‑bones Cinemate build is ready!

Remember to power everything down before disconnecting hardware!