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ASCII Photobooth

A Linux webcam photobooth that converts live frames to ASCII art in the terminal, and can optionally send captures to a parallel-port needle/dot-matrix printer.

There are two front ends:

photobooth.py — a curses TUI. Grabs frames directly via OpenCV/v4l2 (no per-frame process spawn), converts them with the ascii-image-converter binary, and supports live brightness/exposure adjustment. This is the actively developed front end.
exec-cycle.sh / webcam2ascii.sh — a simpler bash implementation of the same live-preview loop, built around fswebcam and ascii-image-converter.

Both read the same webcam.conf / ascii.conf / keybinds.conf / printer.conf files, so you only need to configure your hardware once.

Requirements

Arch Linux (or another pacman/AUR-based distro) is assumed by install-deps.sh
fswebcam, ascii-image-converter, v4l-utils
python-opencv (for photobooth.py)
A V4L2-compatible webcam
Optionally, a parallel-port printer wired up via parport/parport_pc/lp kernel modules, for hardcopy prints

Install everything with:

./install-deps.sh

This installs yay if needed, installs the required packages, adds your user to the lp group (needed to write to /dev/lp0), and loads the parallel-port kernel modules.

Usage

Run the TUI (recommended):

./photobooth.py

Or the bash live-preview loop:

./exec-cycle.sh

Controls

Configurable in keybinds.conf; defaults shown below.

Key	Action
`space`	Capture a photo
`+` / `-`	Adjust brightness
`.` / `,`	Adjust exposure
`r`	Reset brightness/exposure to defaults
`q`	Quit (`photobooth.py` only; `exec-cycle.sh` quits on Ctrl+C)

Captures are saved as photo-<timestamp>.jpg and ascii-img-<timestamp>.txt, and are automatically sent to the printer via txt2printr.sh if one is configured.

Configuration

File	Purpose
`webcam.conf`	Capture device, resolution, JPEG quality, default brightness/exposure, and the v4l2 control names/IDs used to adjust them
`ascii.conf`	`ascii-image-converter` options: output size, character map/complexity, grayscale, negative, flips, and whether the live-preview viewfinder mirrors the print output's aspect ratio (`REAL_VIEWFINDER`)
`keybinds.conf`	Single-character key bindings for capture/brightness/exposure/reset/quit
`printer.conf`	Printer device, A4 landscape rotation (`PRINTER_A4`), and per-page capacity (`PRINTER_MAX_LINES`/`PRINTER_MAX_COLS`)

Printing

txt2printr.sh sends an ASCII art text file to a parallel-port printer (/dev/lp0 by default, override with PRINTER_DEV). Needle/dot-matrix printers have no hardware landscape mode, so setting PRINTER_A4=true in printer.conf rotates the art in software before printing (turn the printed page 90° to read it); photobooth.py instead rotates the source image before ASCII conversion for better quality, and sets PRINTER_MAX_LINES=0 to signal a roll/continuous-feed printer with no fixed page length.

Printer page capacity varies by hardware and isn't reliably predictable from paper geometry — measure it with pagetest.sh:

./pagetest.sh              # numbered lines, to find lines-per-page
./pagetest.sh ruler        # a column ruler, to find chars-per-line
PRINTER_A4=false ./txt2printr.sh pagetest.txt

Read the last line/column that printed on page 1 and set PRINTER_MAX_LINES/PRINTER_MAX_COLS in printer.conf accordingly. printer.conf.hpold.bak and printer.conf.rollpaper.bak are example configs for a couple of previously-tested printers.

Other scripts

yay-installer.sh — installs the yay AUR helper (used by install-deps.sh)
archbaseos-guided-install.sh — an interactive Arch Linux base install script (LUKS2/btrfs/FIDO2), unrelated to the photobooth itself

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