Animated GIFs used to be all the rage a fair number of years ago, but since then, its popularity has not exactly been where it used to be. Still, there is a place for an animated GIF to appear on the Internet, and just like how there is more than one way to skin a cat, so too, are there many different ways to transform a video file into an animated GIF. Here is one of the latest method – using the OTTO camera. The OTTO camera comes with a hand-crank alongside hardware which is powered by a Raspberry Pi device, in addition to hackable software which allows you to dictate how the camera works, as it shoots normal photos, videos, and saves the latter into animated GIF.
There is a catch however – the OTTO camera cannot be found on any store shelves at the moment for one simple fact – it is a crowdfunding project at this point in time, and the Kickstarter campaign intends to raise the necessary capital in order to roll the OTTO camera off production lines in due time.
Those who are interested will be able to reserve one for a pledge of $199 or more, and just to prove a point that the early bird catches the proverbial worm, early backers of the OTTO camera only had to pledge $149 for this puppy.
As for the hardware in action, it will run on a Raspberry Pi Compute Module which features a 700 MHz ARM11 processor, and is accompanied by 512MB RAM and 4GB of internal memory. A 5MP CMOS image sensor is used for photos, where it is also capable of shooting 1080p videos at 30 frames per second. If you turn on the animated GIF feature, all that you need to do is to move the hand crank a bit for each new section of the picture, rewinding it once you are done.
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