Show HN: Glitchy camera – a circuit-bent camera simulator in the browser

[elayabharath]

Fun little side project I built after learning about circuit bending in cameras for intentional glitch effect. It is browser based camera toy where you "rewire" CCD pin pairs, turn knobs to get different glitch artefacts in real time to capture as photos. I had fun learning to simulate different pin modes - channel split, hue/phase shifts, horizontal clock delays, colour kill etc.

Here are some photos taken: https://glitchycam.com/gallery

I intentionally leaned towards skeuomorphic design for nostalgia. I miss the days where I'd spend hours making a button to look like a physical button. Here I chose to make it look like a "good enough" Teenage Engineering device UI.

I tested/used GPT-5.3-Codex to build this from scratch, since there was a lot of hype around it on X. Maybe I wasn’t using it right, but I found it needed a lot of code cleanup at every step and a lot of hand holding along the way. It missed details/nuances and didn't land the skeuomorphic buttons or the interaction polish. It mostly helped with boilerplate where there wasn't much thinking/detailing. It did give a basic starting point for the effect calculations, but didn't really move the needle on the details.

Please give it a go and let me know what you think - your photos and video never leave your browser (you can download them if you choose to). Everything is processed locally in your browser (works offline), nothing is uploaded or seen by anyone.

[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

[elayabharath]

Here are a few I found useful:

- https://ade3.substack.com/p/how-to-make-a-glitch-camera

- https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1BbJMZmAN7hbA2YoD0xsV...

- https://fubar.space/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Glitchwerks-C...

- https://www.reddit.com/r/CircuitBending/ [Many posts are about cameras]

[flatcoke]

Cool project. Love that it's entirely client-side — no uploads, no server processing. More browser tools should work this way.

[imcritic]

HCLK mode needs some knob to control intensity of the effect.

Is it working so slow (like 0.5-1 fps) only for me or is this intended?

Also, you mention video, how to switch to video from photo?

Other than that - that's pretty fun, just like others I love that everything is local on client.

[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.

[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.

[gitowiec]

It was fun to use glitchycam. Thank you for describing your journey with AI, that is similar what I am experiencing.

[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

[naich]

That was exactly my experience with AI coding - useful for ideas and boiler plate code, but not much more.

[harel]

I love it. The aesthetics are fantastic. Can this record a video as well?

[elayabharath]

Not at the moment, but sounds like a great extension to build!

[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