9 ms·

SnapJet: A portable, open source Polaroid printer for smartphones

48 points by lhh 12y ago

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
isaacdegani 12y ago
Just hit 500 backers (and 42% funded) on Kickstarter!
- redindian75 12y ago
  can I use Bluetooth to beam the picture into SnapJet instead of scanning it in?. Coz, the when scanned, the brightness depends on how bright my screen is, proximity sensor off, smudges on screen, misaligned phone, possible screen interruptions like incoming SMS, notifications, statusbar, etc. BT is clean and since u are targeting smartphones, its hard to find a phone without BT
  - joshstrange 12y ago
    That's the big unanswered question, I like the idea but scanning seems dated and prone to issues (especially since I have a larger phone that wouldn't fit in those corner guards). Ideally I could get a BT/BLE-only model for cheaper but they won't be offering that. Best case it can scan or use the optional app to do BT/BLE transfer.
comboy 12y ago
I'm a bit skeptical. I don't know about you but my smartphone screen isn't always super clean. And yes, you can clean it before using it, but I'd love to see how quality looks like in a closeup.
- deganii 12y ago
  Disclaimer: co-founder of SnapJet Hey comboy, SnapJet is resilient (to some degree) with respect to minor smudges. Naturally a clean screen would be best. We have some closeups on website and kickstarter page. http://kck.st/1vGjko0 http://kck.st/1vGjko0 Best, Ismail
  - joshstrange 12y ago
    So why use scanning over BT picture transfer or the like? Scanning an image you have a digital copy of feels on par with holding your laptop over a flatbed scanner to print an email... Also how does this support phones like the iPhone 6/6+ or Nexus 6?
    - joshstrange 12y ago
      So I just looked on KS and found this response: > @Abdul thanks for the question. Our optional app doesn't need to know that SnapJet is attached. All it has to do is display the desired image at the right scale and position - and SnapJet will scan/print it. This is part of what makes SnapJet so simple - any app can work with SnapJet as a print-source, just by displaying the desired photo. > You can think of it as a photocopy machine, where the "paper" is the phone screen. The paper doesn't need to know that it is being copied. So it sounds like you can use their app to display the image you want scaled to their scanner... But how do you position your 6/6+ so that it's lined up?
      - isaacdegani 12y ago
        Hey joshstrange, SnapJet's top has a corner registration feature and you can tell the app what model your phone is to adjust the position/size.
        joshstrange 12y ago
        Ok but my phone won't be able to fit flush with the scanner as the corner guards you have in your video/pictures would cause it to be 1/4" or so off the scanning surface. How do you account for that? Also I feel like phone cases are going to play hell with this.
  - comboy 12y ago
    Perhaps I should have read more carefully: > We've also included an OLED display, USB, and BLE connectivity. If so, that's really awesome, and I'm no more skeptical. I hope you'll be able to make your goal.
deutronium 12y ago
Wouldn't you get a better resolution though with a portable dye-sub printer, as theres no intermediary optical process. To clarify this, I've got a Canon one that uses C M Y layers if I recall correctly and outputs at a resolution of 300PPI.
- isaacdegani 12y ago
  Hey deutronium, dye sub printers and SnapJet have different use cases; dye sub printers take ink and aren't something to throw into a bag to take with you. SnapJet is more of a fun gadget for Smartphones than a professional photo printer. It uses film cartridges and makes interfacing with a smartphone really easy. Cheers! Isaac
  - deutronium 12y ago
    Got you, I've just had a look over some of the examples, they do look impressive!
  - chx 12y ago
    Basically: fund this idea if you want the 7mm future device to happen because at this moment the dye sub printer looks superior. Some dye sub printers have the ink and the paper together in one cartridge. If not, then you can have multiple paper size -- think stickers. While larger than a smartphone, they can have a comparable footprint to a 7" tablet, for eg. compare the Canon CP 910 at 178 x 128 x 60.5 mm to a Nexus 7 tablet at 198.5 x 120 x 10.45 mm.
joshuak 12y ago
Fun idea. I love it when people think outside of the electronics... and anything that helps keep polaroid film around gets my vote.
cphuntington97 12y ago
I would buy one without the "screen scanner" because I'm an otherwise knowledgeable user and scanning the display sounds clunky and stupid.
- Renaud 12y ago
  It doesn't scan in the traditional sense of an office scanner does. This Snapjet doesn't uses a line of CCD to scan a digital picture and then print it on paper. The kind of scan it does is simply to run a slit along the smartphone. The light from the smartphone that goes through the slit simply illuminates the light-sensitive front face of a Fuji Instax Mini instant film. What this is doing is neither printing or scanning: it's transferring the image -in the optical sense- directly from the screen to the light-sensitive photo paper.
leeoniya 12y ago
why not just use NFC or bluetooth? seems like a lot of additional engineering/hardware for worse quality. even the minor hassle of a cable connection would be worth it, no one is going to carry this thing around, it's gonna be on some desk somewhere where a dock or cable would easily be no problem.
- ismaildegani2 12y ago
  Hi leeoniya, Actually, I think the scanning approach actually simplifies things quite a bit. Let's see if I can explain this properly: You can think of SnapJet as performing the same operation as holding a phone about 10 inches away from an old film camera, and opening and closing the shutter. Light comes out of the phone, and hits the film after being focused by a lense. The picture then develops from a chemical reaction based on the incident wavelengths of light. The novelty in SnapJet is simply that we reduce that 10 inches to 1mm - i.e. we focus the light using optical fibers rather than a traditional lense. This actually makes the device super-low-tech. The optical fibers are just plastic, and so the device technically doesn't need any electronics whatsoever. The current printer we're kickstarting has batteries and a PCB in order to support Fuji's film cartridges (and make the user experience a little smoother). But we're imagining future versions that work entirely without batteries or motors and are ultra-slim, like 5-7mm. Hope that makes more sense!
  - leeoniya 12y ago
    i consider this much more complicated than the couple hundred lines of code that it would take to simply send the image electronically, eliminating the need for cropping, straightening denoising and a whole lot of other corrections you need to do when scanning. it would not be as universal and you couldnt do it with older flip phones, but then again you cannot lay a flip phone face down, flat onto a scanning surface.
    - leohutson 12y ago
      I don't think you're quite getting it. This is an analogue printer, there is no scanner, light from the display of the phone is used to expose photo sensitive paper.
joshstrange 12y ago
Let me start by saying I really like the idea of a portable color picture printer. That said the idea of scanning in a picture I have digitally to print it seems a roundabout way to approach this problem. A few google searches revealed this [0] which is a small printer made by Polaroid to do just that (Note: it's a little older and does not work with iPhone but does work with some Android phones). It's $130 (not though Amazon and not prime) and has 4.5 stars (I skimmed the low reviews and I'd bet SnapJet would suffer from the same issues: battery life, picture quality, streaking after a few uses). It would appear that Polaroid is no longer in the stand-alone mobile printer business as they don't list the product on their site and it's only on reseller/auction sites now. I find it hard to believe that the team behind SnapJet can deliver a product as good for close to the same price as Polaroid. Also I'd bet that Polaroid had a good reason for pulling the plug on their mobile printers (Demand, quality issues, high printing costs, etc). This seems like a very high risk KS (not that there are a large number of "sure thing" KS projects but still). Lastly I see no mention of printing over BT/BLE which is the only reason I would buy it. [0] http://smile.amazon.com/Polaroid-CZA-20011B-Instant-Mobile-Printer/dp/B0019UGCLG/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1416858635&sr=1-1&keywords=polaroid+pogo&pebp=1416858645210 http://smile.amazon.com/Polaroid-CZA-20011B-Instant-Mobile-P...
- martey 12y ago
  > Lastly I see no mention of printing over BT/BLE which is the only reason I would buy it. The Kickstarter page - https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/snapjet/snapjet-a-slim-portable-open-source-instant-film-p https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/snapjet/snapjet-a-slim-... - has more details: "We've also included an OLED display, USB, and BLE connectivity. So all the tinkerers and photographers out there can control exposures, hack, and reprogram the SnapJet."
  - joshstrange 12y ago
    See my earlier reply on that sentence: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8654227 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8654227
    - 12y ago
chx 12y ago
Well, I am surely not social enough but my phone-to-paper picture usage involves mostly postcards and there are excellent apps for that already. It's so much easier to snap a picture on the phone click two buttons, a week later someone gets a postcard than printing and then sending it as a physical postcard.
brianmtully 12y ago
There seems to be a lot of comments on how this product seems dated. It prints polaroids. Polaroids are dated. Relax, it's fun low tech.
JonLim 12y ago
I'd be interested in picking one up so I can print little pictures of my niece (and future nieces and nephews) on the fly for their enjoyment, but Dec 2015 is just a bit further away than I'd like. Happy to pick one up when they're out for realsies though, hope you reach your funding goal!
roywiggins 12y ago
I think people here aren't getting what this is. It looks like it transfers the image from the phone to a polaroid film cartridge optically. It's basically a smartphone version of a Daylab enlarger. Which is super-bleeding-cool, because there aren't many important moving parts not provided by the smartphone or the film cartridge. It's not a scanner and a printer. The only way to beam an image to it over bluetooth would be to embed a smartphone screen and backlight into it, which I gather it is not doing. It's taking an analog "contact print."
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
microtheo 12y ago
I love it, it is so retro and simple! I hope they will deliver an app for Windows phone as well! I just wonder how they can align the display on the device (if you have some less famous android phone) and how they can detect how much light exposes the film!
srik 12y ago
msandford 12y ago
Alright so a bunch of people don't seem to understand how this thing works, and aren't reading the Kickstarter. This is not actually a PRINTER. It's a photo paper exposer. What's the difference? Printers work by somehow applying ink to paper. Photo paper works by already having the ink impregnated within it and exposing it to light causes the ink to become active and the result is that you get an image. So the phone is an integral part of the process; without it you have no colored light source and thus, no printer. Why did they use the word "printer" when it's not actually a printer in the technical sense of the word? Because the difference is lost on most people. http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/printers.htm http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/printers.htm EDIT: changed to a better link
brador 12y ago
I love the idea, but the polaroid paper is 0.75 a print. I see people buying, using a few times, then shelving. If it was somehow possible to get that price down to 0.20 or even 0.10 per print this would take over the world.
jrobn 12y ago
LG PD239W Pocket Printer (BLE/NFC)[0]. How is SnapJet better than this? [0] http://m.lg.com/us/cell-phone-accessories/lg-PD239W-pocket-photo-printer http://m.lg.com/us/cell-phone-accessories/lg-PD239W-pocket-p...
moe 12y ago
This looks like it could be a fun party gag, if it was about the size of an iPhone or smaller and very cheap. But at this size and price point? I don't see the appeal over one of the mobile dye-sub printers, some of which are smaller than this device.
hnriot 12y ago
shown with the iPhone 4, what's up with that, it's really a contact printer (as in the old days with an enlarger, except the phone's screen is the light source) bigger screens like the iPhone 6 will crop since it's a contact print. The guy shakes the fuji instant print, reminiscent of polaroid, but no longer makes any difference, kind of funny. the results will be horrible looking and cropped. Waste of time.
bootload 12y ago
"... prints out a high resolution color image on Instax Mini or Polaroid 300PIF film. ..." Access to Film is the weakness here. Polaroid used to be pretty cheap & widely available ~ <https://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/tags/polaroid> https://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/tags/polaroid> Then Polaroid stopped producing it. Want to get that 5x4" old-school Polaroid look? try the "Impossible Instant black lab" ~ https://shop.the-impossible-project.com/shop/cameras/impossible https://shop.the-impossible-project.com/shop/cameras/impossi... It uses the old 600 Polaroid format with new film chemistry. I love the way Impossible is improving the film. It's getting close to what the Polaroid reproduced at it's peak. cf <https://www.the-impossible-project.com/> https://www.the-impossible-project.com/>

48 points by lhh 12y ago

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

isaacdegani 12y ago

Just hit 500 backers (and 42% funded) on Kickstarter!

redindian75 12y ago
can I use Bluetooth to beam the picture into SnapJet instead of scanning it in?. Coz, the when scanned, the brightness depends on how bright my screen is, proximity sensor off, smudges on screen, misaligned phone, possible screen interruptions like incoming SMS, notifications, statusbar, etc. BT is clean and since u are targeting smartphones, its hard to find a phone without BT
- joshstrange 12y ago
  That's the big unanswered question, I like the idea but scanning seems dated and prone to issues (especially since I have a larger phone that wouldn't fit in those corner guards). Ideally I could get a BT/BLE-only model for cheaper but they won't be offering that. Best case it can scan or use the optional app to do BT/BLE transfer.

comboy 12y ago

I'm a bit skeptical. I don't know about you but my smartphone screen isn't always super clean. And yes, you can clean it before using it, but I'd love to see how quality looks like in a closeup.

deganii 12y ago
Disclaimer: co-founder of SnapJet Hey comboy, SnapJet is resilient (to some degree) with respect to minor smudges. Naturally a clean screen would be best. We have some closeups on website and kickstarter page. http://kck.st/1vGjko0 http://kck.st/1vGjko0 Best, Ismail
- joshstrange 12y ago
  So why use scanning over BT picture transfer or the like? Scanning an image you have a digital copy of feels on par with holding your laptop over a flatbed scanner to print an email... Also how does this support phones like the iPhone 6/6+ or Nexus 6?
  - joshstrange 12y ago
    So I just looked on KS and found this response: > @Abdul thanks for the question. Our optional app doesn't need to know that SnapJet is attached. All it has to do is display the desired image at the right scale and position - and SnapJet will scan/print it. This is part of what makes SnapJet so simple - any app can work with SnapJet as a print-source, just by displaying the desired photo. > You can think of it as a photocopy machine, where the "paper" is the phone screen. The paper doesn't need to know that it is being copied. So it sounds like you can use their app to display the image you want scaled to their scanner... But how do you position your 6/6+ so that it's lined up?
    - isaacdegani 12y ago
      Hey joshstrange, SnapJet's top has a corner registration feature and you can tell the app what model your phone is to adjust the position/size.
      - joshstrange 12y ago
        Ok but my phone won't be able to fit flush with the scanner as the corner guards you have in your video/pictures would cause it to be 1/4" or so off the scanning surface. How do you account for that? Also I feel like phone cases are going to play hell with this.
- comboy 12y ago
  Perhaps I should have read more carefully: > We've also included an OLED display, USB, and BLE connectivity. If so, that's really awesome, and I'm no more skeptical. I hope you'll be able to make your goal.

deutronium 12y ago

Wouldn't you get a better resolution though with a portable dye-sub printer, as theres no intermediary optical process. To clarify this, I've got a Canon one that uses C M Y layers if I recall correctly and outputs at a resolution of 300PPI.

isaacdegani 12y ago
Hey deutronium, dye sub printers and SnapJet have different use cases; dye sub printers take ink and aren't something to throw into a bag to take with you. SnapJet is more of a fun gadget for Smartphones than a professional photo printer. It uses film cartridges and makes interfacing with a smartphone really easy. Cheers! Isaac
- deutronium 12y ago
  Got you, I've just had a look over some of the examples, they do look impressive!
- chx 12y ago
  Basically: fund this idea if you want the 7mm future device to happen because at this moment the dye sub printer looks superior. Some dye sub printers have the ink and the paper together in one cartridge. If not, then you can have multiple paper size -- think stickers. While larger than a smartphone, they can have a comparable footprint to a 7" tablet, for eg. compare the Canon CP 910 at 178 x 128 x 60.5 mm to a Nexus 7 tablet at 198.5 x 120 x 10.45 mm.

joshuak 12y ago

Fun idea. I love it when people think outside of the electronics... and anything that helps keep polaroid film around gets my vote.

cphuntington97 12y ago

I would buy one without the "screen scanner" because I'm an otherwise knowledgeable user and scanning the display sounds clunky and stupid.

Renaud 12y ago
It doesn't scan in the traditional sense of an office scanner does. This Snapjet doesn't uses a line of CCD to scan a digital picture and then print it on paper. The kind of scan it does is simply to run a slit along the smartphone. The light from the smartphone that goes through the slit simply illuminates the light-sensitive front face of a Fuji Instax Mini instant film. What this is doing is neither printing or scanning: it's transferring the image -in the optical sense- directly from the screen to the light-sensitive photo paper.

leeoniya 12y ago

why not just use NFC or bluetooth? seems like a lot of additional engineering/hardware for worse quality. even the minor hassle of a cable connection would be worth it, no one is going to carry this thing around, it's gonna be on some desk somewhere where a dock or cable would easily be no problem.

ismaildegani2 12y ago
Hi leeoniya, Actually, I think the scanning approach actually simplifies things quite a bit. Let's see if I can explain this properly: You can think of SnapJet as performing the same operation as holding a phone about 10 inches away from an old film camera, and opening and closing the shutter. Light comes out of the phone, and hits the film after being focused by a lense. The picture then develops from a chemical reaction based on the incident wavelengths of light. The novelty in SnapJet is simply that we reduce that 10 inches to 1mm - i.e. we focus the light using optical fibers rather than a traditional lense. This actually makes the device super-low-tech. The optical fibers are just plastic, and so the device technically doesn't need any electronics whatsoever. The current printer we're kickstarting has batteries and a PCB in order to support Fuji's film cartridges (and make the user experience a little smoother). But we're imagining future versions that work entirely without batteries or motors and are ultra-slim, like 5-7mm. Hope that makes more sense!
- leeoniya 12y ago
  i consider this much more complicated than the couple hundred lines of code that it would take to simply send the image electronically, eliminating the need for cropping, straightening denoising and a whole lot of other corrections you need to do when scanning. it would not be as universal and you couldnt do it with older flip phones, but then again you cannot lay a flip phone face down, flat onto a scanning surface.
  - leohutson 12y ago
    I don't think you're quite getting it. This is an analogue printer, there is no scanner, light from the display of the phone is used to expose photo sensitive paper.

joshstrange 12y ago

Let me start by saying I really like the idea of a portable color picture printer. That said the idea of scanning in a picture I have digitally to print it seems a roundabout way to approach this problem. A few google searches revealed this [0] which is a small printer made by Polaroid to do just that (Note: it's a little older and does not work with iPhone but does work with some Android phones). It's $130 (not though Amazon and not prime) and has 4.5 stars (I skimmed the low reviews and I'd bet SnapJet would suffer from the same issues: battery life, picture quality, streaking after a few uses). It would appear that Polaroid is no longer in the stand-alone mobile printer business as they don't list the product on their site and it's only on reseller/auction sites now. I find it hard to believe that the team behind SnapJet can deliver a product as good for close to the same price as Polaroid. Also I'd bet that Polaroid had a good reason for pulling the plug on their mobile printers (Demand, quality issues, high printing costs, etc). This seems like a very high risk KS (not that there are a large number of "sure thing" KS projects but still). Lastly I see no mention of printing over BT/BLE which is the only reason I would buy it. [0] http://smile.amazon.com/Polaroid-CZA-20011B-Instant-Mobile-Printer/dp/B0019UGCLG/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1416858635&sr=1-1&keywords=polaroid+pogo&pebp=1416858645210 http://smile.amazon.com/Polaroid-CZA-20011B-Instant-Mobile-P...

martey 12y ago
> Lastly I see no mention of printing over BT/BLE which is the only reason I would buy it. The Kickstarter page - https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/snapjet/snapjet-a-slim-portable-open-source-instant-film-p https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/snapjet/snapjet-a-slim-... - has more details: "We've also included an OLED display, USB, and BLE connectivity. So all the tinkerers and photographers out there can control exposures, hack, and reprogram the SnapJet."
- joshstrange 12y ago
  See my earlier reply on that sentence: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8654227 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8654227
  - 12y ago

chx 12y ago

Well, I am surely not social enough but my phone-to-paper picture usage involves mostly postcards and there are excellent apps for that already. It's so much easier to snap a picture on the phone click two buttons, a week later someone gets a postcard than printing and then sending it as a physical postcard.

brianmtully 12y ago

There seems to be a lot of comments on how this product seems dated. It prints polaroids. Polaroids are dated. Relax, it's fun low tech.

JonLim 12y ago

I'd be interested in picking one up so I can print little pictures of my niece (and future nieces and nephews) on the fly for their enjoyment, but Dec 2015 is just a bit further away than I'd like. Happy to pick one up when they're out for realsies though, hope you reach your funding goal!

roywiggins 12y ago

I think people here aren't getting what this is. It looks like it transfers the image from the phone to a polaroid film cartridge optically. It's basically a smartphone version of a Daylab enlarger. Which is super-bleeding-cool, because there aren't many important moving parts not provided by the smartphone or the film cartridge. It's not a scanner and a printer. The only way to beam an image to it over bluetooth would be to embed a smartphone screen and backlight into it, which I gather it is not doing. It's taking an analog "contact print."

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

microtheo 12y ago

I love it, it is so retro and simple! I hope they will deliver an app for Windows phone as well! I just wonder how they can align the display on the device (if you have some less famous android phone) and how they can detect how much light exposes the film!

srik 12y ago

msandford 12y ago

Alright so a bunch of people don't seem to understand how this thing works, and aren't reading the Kickstarter. This is not actually a PRINTER. It's a photo paper exposer. What's the difference? Printers work by somehow applying ink to paper. Photo paper works by already having the ink impregnated within it and exposing it to light causes the ink to become active and the result is that you get an image. So the phone is an integral part of the process; without it you have no colored light source and thus, no printer. Why did they use the word "printer" when it's not actually a printer in the technical sense of the word? Because the difference is lost on most people. http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/printers.htm http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/printers.htm EDIT: changed to a better link

brador 12y ago

I love the idea, but the polaroid paper is 0.75 a print. I see people buying, using a few times, then shelving. If it was somehow possible to get that price down to 0.20 or even 0.10 per print this would take over the world.

jrobn 12y ago

LG PD239W Pocket Printer (BLE/NFC)[0]. How is SnapJet better than this? [0] http://m.lg.com/us/cell-phone-accessories/lg-PD239W-pocket-photo-printer http://m.lg.com/us/cell-phone-accessories/lg-PD239W-pocket-p...

moe 12y ago

This looks like it could be a fun party gag, if it was about the size of an iPhone or smaller and very cheap. But at this size and price point? I don't see the appeal over one of the mobile dye-sub printers, some of which are smaller than this device.

hnriot 12y ago

shown with the iPhone 4, what's up with that, it's really a contact printer (as in the old days with an enlarger, except the phone's screen is the light source) bigger screens like the iPhone 6 will crop since it's a contact print. The guy shakes the fuji instant print, reminiscent of polaroid, but no longer makes any difference, kind of funny. the results will be horrible looking and cropped. Waste of time.

bootload 12y ago

"... prints out a high resolution color image on Instax Mini or Polaroid 300PIF film. ..." Access to Film is the weakness here. Polaroid used to be pretty cheap & widely available ~ <https://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/tags/polaroid> https://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/tags/polaroid> Then Polaroid stopped producing it. Want to get that 5x4" old-school Polaroid look? try the "Impossible Instant black lab" ~ https://shop.the-impossible-project.com/shop/cameras/impossible https://shop.the-impossible-project.com/shop/cameras/impossi... It uses the old 600 Polaroid format with new film chemistry. I love the way Impossible is improving the film. It's getting close to what the Polaroid reproduced at it's peak. cf <https://www.the-impossible-project.com/> https://www.the-impossible-project.com/>