Ireland-based photographer David Hunt recently came up with the brilliant idea of turning an old broken battery grip into a small computer that can be connected to his Canon 5D Mark II. After buying a Raspberry Pi computer for €35, he modified the battery grip and stuffed the computer inside.



Once the the “surgery” was complete, he had a battery grip that housed a functioning computer with Linux (Raspbian), 2 USB ports, a network adapter, HDMI, and a General Purpose Input/Output.

“Why would anyone want to turn a grip into a small computer?” you might ask. Well, the possibilities are pretty exciting:

Hunt says that the grip could one day offer wireless tethered shooting by attaching a Wi-Fi dongle to the USB port, easy backups by attaching a USB or hard drive, remote controlled operation, a custom intervalometer, on-the-fly image conversion for previewing images on a display, and simple things like triggering the camera shutter or waking it up.

Maybe one day we’ll all be using special battery grip-style computers that offer all kinds of special features (Internet connectivity and apps, for example).

Head on over to Hunt’s blog post for a more detailed look into how he built the thing.

Camera Pi – DSLR Camera with Embedded Computer (via Make)

Image credits: Photographs by David Hunt