Overview#

CineMate is an open-source boilerplate for building your own digital cinema camera on a Raspberry Pi. It records CinemaDNG raw files (10/12-bit, plus 16-bit ClearHDR on the IMX585) using off-the-shelf parts.

It pairs a lightweight Python interface with a custom fork of cinepi-raw, built on the CinePi-RAW recorder by Csaba Nagy.

Camera stack exploded

Figure 1: The CineMate camera stack — CineMate (the user interface) running on top of CinePi-RAW (the recorder).

Installation#

Easiest path is to flash the prebuilt image — see the Quick start and the releases page.

To build the stack yourself on Raspberry Pi OS Lite (Bookworm), or to use the one-click installer, see Manual installation.

Customisation#

GPIO buttons and switches, rotary encoders, potentiometers and the OLED display are optional — see Additional hardware for an overview. They are configured via the settings file. On the Pi, type editsettings in the terminal to open it.

Compatible sensors#

  • IMX477 (official Raspberry Pi HQ camera)
  • IMX296 (official Raspberry Pi GS camera)
  • IMX283 (OneInchEye by Will Whang)
  • IMX585 (Starlight Eye by Will Whang)

Preinstalled hardware#

What's new#

See the changelog for the latest release notes.

Community#

Join the CinePi Discord to discuss and share builds.

Supporting the project#

ko-fi