This author has recently acquired a Polaroid camera. They’re great fun, they work like magic, and they give you an excuse to stare intently at a blank space until meaning appears (one of our favourite hobbies). The other wonderful thing about Polaroids is that, bereft of the mega-sensitive optical sensors that modern camera phones have, they are really limited in how much light they let in, giving all of our photos a murky, 1970s brown feeling. 

Printables user Spacerower has brought some of that instant photo magic to this build, an instant camera that produces low-resolution black and white images using a thermal printer. It’s powered by a 1200 mah lithium-ion battery, and uses a Raspberry Pi Zero W and a Raspberry Pi Camera Module. 

Other than the fact that this machine is magic in a box, the thing that we’re impressed by is the interface. There’s no room on the tiny 240×240 screen to display menu options, so the user controls the brightness of the camera using an EC11 rotary encoder. A short press of the green button takes a picture, and a long press prints it out.