Print Instagram Photos with Cheapstaprint

Photography & Video
Print Instagram Photos with Cheapstaprint

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

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I'm a word nerd who loves to geek out on how emerging technology affects the lexicon. I was an editor on the first 40 volumes of MAKE, and I love shining light on the incredible makers in our community. In particular, covering art is my passion — after all, art is the first thing most of us ever made. When not fawning over perfect word choices, I can be found on the nearest mountain, looking for untouched powder fields and ideal alpine lakes.

Contact me at snowgoli@gmail.com or via @snowgoli.

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