ESOXOFFORE Kids Camera - Command Line Tool Automation

As my recent review implied, I've been enjoying my new ESOXOFFORE Kids Instant Print Camera. It didn't take long, however, before I identified a couple of camera-related tasks that I could streamline with code. I give you: toycameraassist, a command-line tool for working with the ESOXOFFORE.

This short script, which depends on gphotoassist and sdcardassist handles two common workflows: archiving pictures from, and loading pictures to, the camera. Here's the script in action.

Archiving Photos

Step one, of course, is to shoot some photos. My morning tea may not be the most interesting subject, but it's one that I had at my fingertips:

Next, I popped the SD card out of the camera and into my laptop. I'm running Mint Linux, but toycameraassist should work equally well from a WSL2 or Mac OS terminal. I then ran toycameraassist -a archive.

$ toycameraassist -a archive -v | mightee
PICT0000.jpg:https://photos.google.com/lr/photo/AHnaBgstn16lDqnQQrVMfHk6gO8fdEpEjvIeTpSsxhcSZceegzJv0y02L2CfEahXoumYzj9Ri6YS7TTHIkT6KbAf5qftppapcw
PICT0001.jpg:https://photos.google.com/lr/photo/AHnaBgsorU4SZmzW0wjCxwgoyRk3Yp17wLMX6gKLlS1jQw61BZSwX2dlJt8TjZ4CzRc3YkaLOGQhgfY-GHEoPI1mbIUM3XMycQ
PICT0002.jpg:https://photos.google.com/lr/photo/AHnaBgvh2-7_R680yo6RdqpTI5Syz0xoKCXwUozB8IkZmhyEr1dDDv-_UobwpJmfvUGXDud87ImYvlZPyobHwD9c6JbMcMLjCg
PICT0003.jpg:https://photos.google.com/lr/photo/AHnaBgvrr7dsmQ1F3SMm7GWg0g312kkfbgyF9WlP4BpHkb8PDaDu_zJVUaJokZmzFR5Fk9ySSagXLGLb12SUxzojVnZewHCmNQ
PICT0004.jpg:https://photos.google.com/lr/photo/AHnaBgukO4g_SYSd3MG18iKA59WFBiyIL-pl-GFLSWpfpvpVAIgZiv1i8ZFrLL56pzmGv_srClEcAvRGMrN7vtmou_sIYKyLIw
PICT0005.jpg:https://photos.google.com/lr/photo/AHnaBgtznwDNI8dPAJKbI0aqvLBc3_jBVVAAJbY_I6WcmM5dZq62PeCyNMVItWcJR7tyqFmIeET0zJyVTKOHQYNEvVd4KaFO8Q
PICT0006.jpg:https://photos.google.com/lr/photo/AHnaBgulFX2cWEgLjZN6RLrajeSxYJR0mJYdwl0RWvnLJjenyJoZtpqOOAChbCuJexWEZLHe1O4otS4jIqk844caQ1zLWhHXhw
PICT0007.jpg:https://photos.google.com/lr/photo/AHnaBgvHd-eicj_6aqYhBuHtEtgZwzWteTjYAwIcCtywQpHfVaJWsZm-7DyuE9tKAenc2OQ6bLobuLf3SSQ65oepK99KipQbbg
PICT0008.jpg:https://photos.google.com/lr/photo/AHnaBgu3ucZo8ogslauMNYnFc7rlgD5eQMHpu3zhTqnbGhyFLE_YltjI9Tos6kg4MlMN0GG8zbar0_7pfQdPyL2LzsQ1XCJFTg
PICT0009.jpg:https://photos.google.com/lr/photo/AHnaBgsDu4KbJO5JoLeHAWvRNoWtNi5EyMuqga7n8KFAb1C3WbNrQBQHz8Xe80qmJEpKNT6ZGHXJwZDWOvi3mEktmaTE9ib7rg

And that's it. All the images have been taken off the card and pushed to a Google Photos album that's defined in ~/.config/toycameraassist/default.config.

After a few moments, the images appeared in my Google Photos feed, as well as in the default folder that I set.

The process isn't as magical as Google Photos' backup on Android, but it's miles ahead of manually managing and uploading photos.

Loading Photos

Next up, toycameraassist allows you to load arbitrary photos into the camera, so you can use the camera as a low-cost photo printer.

Step one again begins with a selection of photos. This time, however, I'm pulling them from Google Photos as they're taken with my Galaxy S22 Ultra.

I downloaded these photos to a local directory, and put the camera's SD card into my laptop. I then ran toycameraassist -a load.

  # In Google Photos, I clicked 'Download all' on a 'Print Photos'
  $ unzip Print\ Photos-1-001.zip
  $ cd Print\ Photos
  $ toycameraassist -a load *.jpg

The SD card now has the photos scaled, stripped of EXIF data and named as the camera expects. Surprisingly, stripping the image metadata is a key step, as the camera refused to read images that skipped this step.

I then ejected the card from my laptop and put it back into the camera. Finally, I fired up the camera and was able to browse and print the pictures as though they had been captured with the ESOXOFFORE.

Here are the prints from the camera, hastily mounted on 3x5 index cards:

Not bad for a $30 camera and $0.09 worth of materials.

You can grab the script and its dependencies here. Enjoy!