Ham radio operators may be familiar with slow-scan television (SSTV) where an image is sent out over the airwaves to be received, decoded, and displayed on a computer monitor by other radio operators. It’s a niche mode that isn’t as popular as modern digital modes like FT8, but it still has its proponents. SSTV isn’t only confined to the radio, though. [BLANCHARD Jordan] used this encoding method to store digital images on a cassette tape in a custom-built tape deck for future playback and viewing.

The self-contained device first uses an ESP32 and its associated camera module to take a picture, with a screen that shows the current view of the camera as the picture is being taken. In this way it’s fairly similar to any semi-modern digital camera. From there, though, it starts to diverge from a typical digital camera. The digital image is converted first to analog and then stored as audio on a standard cassette tape, which is included in the module in lieu of something like an SD card.