Strange Inventions Lab, a DIY electronics project run by Dutch maker Jens, has published the build files for a handmade instant camera that records photographs onto reusable e-paper cartridges rather than consumable film or a digital memory card. The project is documented on the Strange Inventions Lab YouTube channel and website, where the files are available for purchase.

The camera is built around a Raspberry Pi 3 A+, a 5-megapixel camera module, and 1.54-inch e-paper displays, all housed in a 3D-printed body. The cartridges — also 3D-printed — slide into a slot on the rear of the camera in a manner reminiscent of handheld game cartridges from the 1980s and 1990s. Each cartridge holds a single image on its e-paper display, which retains the image indefinitely without requiring power. The stated motivation behind the project was the desire for a physical photographic object that did not involve consumable materials or recurring costs, as conventional instant cameras from Fujifilm and Polaroid require.

The e-paper displays used are capable of rendering only four colors — black, white, red, and yellow — which imposes a significant constraint on photographic representation. To address this, Jens developed a custom image-processing pipeline that remaps the colors of captured photographs to these four channels. The camera offers two shooting modes — dithered and undithered — which affect how the color remapping is applied and the visual character of the resulting image. The output is not a conventional color photograph by any standard, but the limited palette gives each image a graphic, poster-like quality.