What is it?#

Cinemate is a boilerplate cinema camera system for Raspberry Pi 5 building on CinePi‑RAW recorder by Csaba Nagy for enabling 12 bit (or even 16 bit) Cinema DNG recordings using off-the-shelf components.

Cinemate provides a minimal starting point that you can extend with your own controls and accessories.

The project combines a Python UI with a custom fork of cinepi-raw.

Camera stack exploded

Figure 1: Camera stack exploded view. Apps change settings by updating Redis keys. CinePi-RAW listens for those updates and captures frames accordingly while Cinemate provides the camera user interface.

New features in version 3.1#

  • fast uncompressed dng encoder, supporting both IMX 585 color and mono sensors (normal SSD's working well for HD @ 25 fps)
  • redesigned HDMI ui
  • sound recording activated
  • dual sensor support
  • punch in digital zoom of preview
  • i2c oled module and enum enhanced Redis key handling by tevey
  • selection of physical camera port cam0 or cam1
  • choose specific HDMI output port, 0 or 1
  • adapted to libcamera 0.5/rpicam-apps 1.7

Installation#

See the releases section for preinstalled image file and Quick Start Guide.

For manual install of the camera stack on Raspberry Pi Bookworm, see the here.

Compatible sensors#

  • IMX477 (official Raspberry Pi HQ camera)
  • IMX294 (official Raspberry Pi GS camera)
  • IMX585 (Starlight Eye by Will Whang)
  • IMX283 (OneInchEye by Will Whang)

Preinstalled hardware#

Customization#

Buttons, encoders and oled display are optional and configured via the settings file.

Join the CinePi Discord for discussions and sharing builds.

Supporting the project#

ko-fi