Monday, November 24, 2014

Snapjet prints your phone photos without wires or apps

Snapjet uses the very same light emitted by your smartphone's screen to expose the film lying inside. It employs micro-structured optical polymers, basically a bundle of optical fibers, to transfer that image onto the film. The printer also uses a thin sliding layer so that the whole film sheet doesn't get exposed all at once and only in stages. The slower the sheet slides to expose the screen, the brighter the resulting photo will be. But the slower the printing will be too.

The great thing about Snapjet is that it was designed to work with almost any combination possible. It doesn't have fixed mounts (though there seem to be guides for an iPhone 5) so it can work with any smartphone screen. Actually, the quality of resulting photo is directly proportional to the quality of the screen. The printer can also work with either Polaroid 300 films or Fujifilm's Instax variant. Plus, the board design is also being open sourced so those who want and can will be able to build their own. There is also an OLED display, a USB port, and Bluetooth LE connectivity so that modders can also repurpose Snapjet to their hearts' desire.

Sounds too good (or too strange) to be true? The only proverbial wart right now on Snapjet's is that it isn't a commercial product, at least not yet. It can only be found on Kickstarter where a limited number of $129 pledges will get you one printer, later to become $149 when the tickets run out. At the moment, they've just crossed barely a third of their $155,000 goal, though they still have 25 days to go to prove that there's a market for their innovation.

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