An Inexpensive Time-Lapse Setup With the New Raspberry Pi Zero W

Time-lapses, as Raspberry Pi hacker Jeff Geerling puts it, “Transform subtle, slow processes into something beautiful, and often make us think about things in new ways.” He also notes that this type of photography used to require expensive equipment and specialized knowledge. Though prices have come down, you still wouldn’t want to leave your kind-of-expensive equipment in a situation where it’s vulnerable to theft or damage.

For an extremely versatile yet still inexpensive solution, Geerling set his new Raspberry Pi Zero W up with a Pi Camera and a USB power supply to take photos for around $50.

When finished with its sequence, the device generates an animated GIF or video of what it captured automatically. Future improvements to the build include a weatherproof enclosure for outdoor us, as well as optimizing the software for directly sending videos to Dropbox or a network share. You can check out his project write-up to see how to pull this off, and find his script/app on GitHub.