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Show HN: Glitchy camera – a circuit-bent camera simulator in the browser
160 points by elayabharath 1 day ago | 21 comments
  • nickthegreek
    I just had gpt do a deep research on how to get started with physical circuit bending old digital cameras last night after seeing some fun tiktoks. Anyone know of any quick start resources/kits?

    inspiration that I had me digging into this stuff: https://www.tiktok.com/@0xa.mp4

  • 0x7cfe
    Could've just name it Genius iLook 1321, lol. At least that was the experience for me when I tried to write a Linux driver for it. It was a pre-UVC camera, so that time I did all the glitches natively.
  • halfdaft
    Had great fun with this today, thanks! Makes me think I'd love a compact hackable point'n'click glitch camera that you can load with glitch patches. Like a lomo and a guitar pedal had a baby.
  • neom
    I triggered the apple reactions and it added something fun: https://s.h4x.club/geuGjJgz

    Really really really fun! Thanks for making it. :)

  • ldad
    Nice! It’s the polish and attention to detail that really distinguishes this from something purely generated with AI. Getting the design details right shows the human touch.
  • andai
    This is super cool :) How did you do the circuit bending?

    Is it emulating the CCD chip somehow, or approximating the effects?

    • elayabharath
      It is visually approximating the effects to what shorting the pins would do
  • flatcoke
    Cool project. Love that it's entirely client-side — no uploads, no server processing. More browser tools should work this way.
  • fallinditch
    Great job and thank you, I will be using this. I already love to use my phone camera, it's nice to have a glitch option.
  • naich
    That was exactly my experience with AI coding - useful for ideas and boiler plate code, but not much more.
  • gitowiec
    It was fun to use glitchycam. Thank you for describing your journey with AI, that is similar what I am experiencing.
  • harel
    I love it. The aesthetics are fantastic. Can this record a video as well?
  • tgv
    It looks very convincing, and funky. How does the simulation work?
    • elayabharath
      I capture each of the frames and process it pixel by pixel[1]. There are 3 inputs to the simulation

      1. The gain knob controls the overall intensity of the effect

      2. The selected pins / effects are applied to the frame. I describe a couple of the effects below:

      For HClock: If the horizontal clock pin is selected, I cut the frame into variable height slices (some are 2-3px, others 8-20px). For each slice, I calculate a random shift (up to ~20% of the frame width) and move the slice to the left or right by the shift value. Then I randomise between keeping the slice normal (70% of the time), black (15%), or a random color band (15%). I then add a magenta tint + darken every other line to simulate a broken TV signal.

      For OD: If output drain pin is selected, I compute a random global offset and per line offet jitter. Then for each of the pixels, I move the red to the left and blue to the right by the jitter value.

      After the effects are added, I add a global noise, some corrupt lines (on ~30% of the frames, random horizontal lines of magenta/pink/white, shifted/added)

      3. Finally a global hue shift is added based on the second knob.

      One thing I realised is that Math.random() produced a lot of noise and flow between the frames looked disorienting. So I used a simple integer hash function to produce a more "deterministic" random number and the frames looked more stable/consistent.

      [1] I should probably look for optimisations to prevent the device heating up after a few minutes.

  • imbusy111
    I like that it is based on hardware fundamentals.
  • luckys
    Love it! Bookmarked :-)
  • emilfihlman
    E: Nevermind, it's my university Fortiguard bullshit.

    Anyone else getting certificate issue?

    ...Certificate issue was here