Cool idea, but kinda sad that it has to go through a cloud-provider. I feel like there's a possibility with an accelerator-board (Coral TPU or something), to make this into a totally local thing maybe?
The longer-waiting time is surely not an issue when considering how many people still use Polaroids.
Hey it's Alex, I was one of the creators of this project. We thought it would be fun to experiment with this odd mix of real, physical media and altering reality with diffusion models. I'm very happy with the results lol!
The entire thing can be built for around ~$35-40.
Here's our parts list:
- Raspberry pi 2w for its low power draw, wifi capabilities, decent memory (512mb), and low cost ($15). Also with a arducam
- Cheap TTL Aliexpress thermal printer along with sticker thermal paper
- Rotary encoder for switching modes, push button for our shutter, and tactile switch for our power switch
- I2C OLED display for display our modes and settings
- 2 18650 batteries and a 3amp 5v UPS supply, enabling good battery life and regulation. We also add a 1000uF capacity to guard against current spikes from the printer.
Nice. I’ve seen a couple of these - Instagen [1] is probably one of the more recent ones - but I’d love to see Diffuji stand out by potentially adding some kind of BYOK or proxy requests to a home machine with a powerful enough GPU.
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[ 4.2 ms ] story [ 18.4 ms ] threadThe entire thing can be built for around ~$35-40.
Here's our parts list: - Raspberry pi 2w for its low power draw, wifi capabilities, decent memory (512mb), and low cost ($15). Also with a arducam - Cheap TTL Aliexpress thermal printer along with sticker thermal paper - Rotary encoder for switching modes, push button for our shutter, and tactile switch for our power switch - I2C OLED display for display our modes and settings - 2 18650 batteries and a 3amp 5v UPS supply, enabling good battery life and regulation. We also add a 1000uF capacity to guard against current spikes from the printer.
We have a longer write up on our devpost: https://devpost.com/software/diffuji?ref_content=user-portfo...
We submitted this for Treehacks 2026, and ended up winning the Most Creative grand prize :)
[1] - https://www.instagram.com/instagen.camera