Here’s how to make a pinhole camera from a single sheet of poster board. I came up with it in order to teach a bunch of kids how to make a pinhole camera and how they work, so I needed materials which would be inexpensive and which I could find in abundance.
Poster board is available at art stores and stores with an art or school supply section like Walmart. Most dollar stores and discount stores also have them and they cost only around $1 dollar (US) each.
Ideally the poster board should be 21 7/8″ x 28″, and the one I’d developed this with was. However, I later bought some more and they were 21 7/8″ x 27 3/4″, so 1/4″ shorter on the long side. I show below how I handled that in case it happens to you too.
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7:30pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
