Most digital cameras are closed boxes: you get the buttons, menus and file formats the maker chose. Reddit user jpotter124 built the opposite. The R1 Mini is a 100 mm cube with a Raspberry Pi 5 inside, an interchangeable-lens HQ camera sensor at the front and real buttons for the settings photographers change most. It shoots RAW DNG stills and CinemaDNG video, runs for five to six hours while recording, and every part of it can be changed.
What is inside the cube
- Computer: Raspberry Pi 5 with 4 GB RAM and an active cooler
- Sensor: Arducam IMX477 HQ camera module (12.3 MP Sony IMX477)
- Lens: C/CS mount, so it takes cheap C-mount and CS-mount lenses
- Screen: 4-inch Waveshare display, 720 x 720
- Power: a 10,000 mAh Mophie power bank, about 5-6 hours recording or 8-9 hours idle
- Storage: a USB 3.0 drive, needed for video
- Extras: MPU6050 tilt sensing, a status LED and a vibration motor from an Xbox controller
Real buttons, real formats
Physical buttons set frame rate, ISO and white balance, and one more button sleeps the display or shuts the Pi down safely. The vibration motor gives a click-like buzz for button presses and when a USB drive is inserted, and it switches off automatically during recording so it does not shake the shot.
Video goes up to 2028 x 1520 at 30 fps, or 60 fps at lower resolutions, saved as CinemaDNG frame sequences that can be graded in DaVinci Resolve. Stills can be DNG, PNG, TIFF or JPEG. The camera runs ApertarOS, an open-source camera operating system with physical-control support, Wi-Fi management and a web interface, customised with the maker's own button mapping and metadata.
Heat was the hard part
The Pi 5 runs hot enough to deform some 3D-printed parts. The active cooler holds it around 50 to 55 deg C, and one PLA button that warped was reprinted in ABS. The enclosure was designed in Autodesk Fusion with removable panels and internal shelves, and the maker has offered the STEP files to anyone who wants to build one.
Our take
The IMX477 with a C-mount lens is the sweet spot for Pi cameras: real glass, RAW files and a sensor big enough to be fun. What makes the R1 Mini worth studying is the finish: thermal design, sensible buttons and haptics that turn a Pi project into a camera you would actually carry.
Image credit: jpotter124 (via Hackster.io), cropped and resized.
About the author: Aswinth Raj is an electronics engineer and the editor of CircuitDigest, where he has published more than 150 hands-on projects and tutorials across Arduino, PIC, ESP32, Raspberry Pi and EV battery systems. He selects the stories on this page for what engineers and makers can actually learn or build from. Connect on LinkedIn
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