An Ingenious Camera That Turns Color E-Paper Cartridges Into Reusable Photos

Engineer Jens of Strange Inventions Lab built an ingenious custom digital camera that displays each photo on a removable, reusable cartridge containing a four-color e-paper screen. The concept is similar to a Polaroid camera, but each cartridge becomes a physical photograph that can be rewritten later.

This camera uses small four-color e-paper displays as physical “digital film”. Take a photo, wait for it to appear on the cartridge, pull the cartridge out and insert a new one.

Jens used image processing and custom hardware built around a Raspberry Pi to prepare photos for the four-color e-paper displays.

I designed the camera around a Raspberry Pi 3 A+, a 5 MP camera module and inexpensive 1.54-inch e-paper displays. …Because e-paper retains its image without power, every cartridge becomes a tiny physical photograph that you can keep, display and rewrite later.  

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Lori Dorn
Lori Dorn

Lori is a Laughing Squid Contributing Editor based in New York City who has been writing blog posts for over a decade. She also enjoys making jewelry, playing guitar, taking photos and mixing craft cocktails.

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