What is it?

Cinemate is a boilerplate cinema camera system for Raspberry Pi 5. builds upon CinePi-raw, authored by Csaba Nagy for enabling 12 bit (or even 16 bit) Cinema DNG recordings using off-the-shelf components.

Cinemate provides a minimal starting point that you can extend with your own controls and accessories.

The project combines a Python UI with a custom fork of cinepi-raw.

New features in version 3.2

• improved mounting mechanics for NVME and SSD drives with less drop frames
• erase and format drives via Cinemate CLI (ext4/NTFS)
• storage preroll to "warm up" the recording media, improving writing stability
• improved audio sync with correction of effective fps (different resolutions/frame rates due to sensor VBLANK), available for fine tuning in src/module/sensor_correction_factors.py
• option to record a fixed number of frames or seconds for user calibration of fps correction factors (run Cinemate manually for this calibration as feedback is supplied in the terminal)
• improved recognition of attached microphones

Compatible sensors

• IMX477 (official Raspberry Pi HQ camera)
• IMX296 (official Raspberry Pi GS camera)
• IMX283 (OneInchEye by Will Whang)
• IMX585 (Starlight Eye by Will Whang)

Preinstalled hardware

• CFE Hat
• Grove Base Hat
• Adafruit I2C Quad Rotary Encoder

Camera stack

Apps change settings by updating Redis keys. CinePi-RAW listens for those updates and captures frames accordingly while Cinemate provides the camera user interface.

Installation

See the releases section for preinstalled image file and Quick Start Guide.

For manual install, see the documentation.

Bare-bones build

To try Cinemate you need:

• Raspberry Pi 4 or 5
• Official HQ or GS camera module
• SSD drive such as a Samsung T7 formatted ext4 and labelled RAW
• HDMI monitor or a phone/tablet connected to the Pi hotspot for preview

Customization

Buttons, encoders and oled display are optional and configured via settings file.

Documentation

Full manual installation instructions, configuration guides and CLI reference live here.

Join the CinePi Discord for discussions and sharing builds.

Acknowledgements

The Cinemate stack is built on top of several open-source projects. Special thanks to all authors!

• CinePi-raw – Csaba Nagy
• IMX585 and IMX283 drivers – Will Whang
• libcamera – Ideas on board
• cpp-mjpeg-streamer – Nadjieb Mohammadi
• lgpio – Joan
• PiShrink - Drew Bonasera

Also thanks to Simon at Altcinecam for support and assistance!

Get your sensors and CFE Hats here: https://www.tindie.com/stores/will123321/

Supporting the project