creature shots

The folks at Creature have offices in Seattle and London, and wanted to collect Instagram feeds from both offices in one place. Of the mind that a collection of printed pics would be cooler than a digital feed, they created the Cheapstaprint. Basically, all you need is their open source code, available on GitHub, which works with any printer. They chose to use a Polaroid PoGo portable printer, which you can find for under $70. Here’s team member Mike Rozycki with details about their version:

We’re using a Polaroid PoGo housed inside a cigar box. We used a Dremmel to route out a slot in the front for picture emission and a space for the power
cable to the side. The PoGo’s connected via bluetooth to an inconspicuous laptop nearby that pulls pictures from Instagram using our code and pushes them to the little printer. We chose the PoGo because we wanted little stickers, but the code works for any printer on your network. Ideally, we’d love people to be a little conceptual with this. Our personal favorite thus far is pictures of #rain falling out of a cloud.

You will notice there’s a decent amount of empty space in that box though. We want to see if we can run this off a Rasperry Pi and remove the laptop/bluetooth portion from the equation by connecting via USB in the box. That way it’ll just be a stand-alone bundle with a single power cord.

IMG_9545

cheapstaprint

BY Goli Mohammadi

I'm senior editor of MAKE magazine and have worked at MAKE since the first issue. I'm a word nerd who particularly loves to geek out on how emerging technology affects the lexicon as a whole. When not fawning over perfect word choices, I can be found on the nearest mountain, looking for the ideal alpine lake or hunting for snow to feed my inner snowboard addict.

12 Responses to Print Instagram Photos with Cheapstaprint

  1. tribecalledmapquest on said:

    Cool hack! Have you seen Static Pixels eco-friendly Instagram prints? http://staticpixels.com/deepsquare-instagram-prints/

  2. Is there a step by step on using the Code or set-up? (not very good with code/coding/codes)

    Thank you

  3. How do you get the code to work? It seems to have all the right pieces, but for the life of me I can’t get it integrated into my system. PLEASE HELP!!!

  4. Okay, after a few weeks of hacking at the code, I’ve fixed Cheapstaprint. Instructions and all necessary files are in this download: http://www.mediafire.com/?sahb0w14fzsrpuo

    • Jeremy on said:

      Turner, I was following your instructions but I’m on a mac. Do I need to switch it up or do you have any recommendations for an easyphp installer? I’ve got zero experience but the directions seem pretty straight forward plus I REALLY want to get this working.
      Thanks.

  5. Shannon on said:

    This is so awesome. I just got this setup on my pc. I have to print manually since I don’t have a mac. Is there a pc way to automate that process? I changed the code around a little to call my own pictures up instead of certain tags. Is there a way to display hashtags and likes at the bottom instead of a logo? I’m a noob at this kind of stuff.

    • I’m currently working on updating the code to also include options for what to display on the footer (including comment text), the orientation of the display, how the new pictures transition in and so on. Look for an update in the next few weeks, right here :)

  6. I tried to get the web end of this running on a Raspberry Pi. I can get the initial index page to work and then it looks like it makes calls to instagram, but doesn’t pull in any images at all. What am I doing wrong? I’m a hopeless coder but would love this to work on the R-Pi.

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