Time-lapse photography in Raspberry Pi - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Time-lapse photography

📖 Scenario: You have a Raspberry Pi with a camera module. You want to create a simple program that takes photos at regular intervals to make a time-lapse video later.

🎯 Goal: Build a Python program that takes a photo every few seconds and saves it with a unique filename.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a list of filenames for photos

Set an interval time in seconds

Use a loop to simulate taking photos at each interval

Print the filenames of photos taken

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Time-lapse photography is used to capture slow changes like plants growing or clouds moving by taking photos at set intervals.

💼 Career

Understanding loops and timing is important for automation tasks in programming and working with hardware like Raspberry Pi.

1

Create a list of photo filenames

Create a list called photo_filenames with these exact strings: 'photo1.jpg', 'photo2.jpg', 'photo3.jpg', 'photo4.jpg', 'photo5.jpg'.

Raspberry Pi

# Create a list called photo_filenames with 5 photo names
# Your code here

Hint

Use square brackets [] to create a list and put the photo names as strings inside.

2

Set the interval time

Create a variable called interval_seconds and set it to the number 10 to represent the time between photos in seconds.

Raspberry Pi

photo_filenames = ['photo1.jpg', 'photo2.jpg', 'photo3.jpg', 'photo4.jpg', 'photo5.jpg']
# Create a variable interval_seconds and set it to 10
# Your code here

Hint

Just write interval_seconds = 10 to set the interval time.

3

Simulate taking photos with a loop

Use a for loop with the variable filename to go through each item in photo_filenames. Inside the loop, write a comment # Simulate taking photo to represent taking a photo.

Raspberry Pi

photo_filenames = ['photo1.jpg', 'photo2.jpg', 'photo3.jpg', 'photo4.jpg', 'photo5.jpg']
interval_seconds = 10
# Use a for loop to go through photo_filenames
# Your code here

Hint

Write for filename in photo_filenames: and indent the comment inside the loop.

4

Print the photo filenames taken

Inside the for loop, write print(f"Photo taken: {filename}") to show the photo filename taken.

Raspberry Pi

photo_filenames = ['photo1.jpg', 'photo2.jpg', 'photo3.jpg', 'photo4.jpg', 'photo5.jpg']
interval_seconds = 10
for filename in photo_filenames:
    # Print the photo filename taken
    # Your code here

Hint

Use print(f"Photo taken: {filename}") inside the loop to show each photo name.