Back to the golden days of film: The matchbox-sized slide projector that beams your Instagram photos onto any surface



The Projecteo's design is based on slide carousel projectors

9 digital photos can be printed onto 35mm film and beamed onto any surface



The projector reached its funding target on the website Kickstarter in less than 24 hours last December and is finally available to buy



It sounds like a spell from Harry Potter - but the Projecteo is in fact taking retro photography to a new level.

The tiny replica of a slide projector beams a wheel of nine Instagram images onto a nearby wall, using wheels of 35mm slide film made online.

The device was created by a London firm which successfully raised more than £55,000 during a Kickstarter campaign last December.



And now the pocket-sized, battery-powered projectors are available to buy.



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The Projecteo is a tiny replica of a slide projector that can display Instagram pictures printed onto 35mm film. It is powered by batteries, which last up to eight hours, and costs £22

HOW DOES THE PROJECTEO WORK?

Go to GetProjecteo.com and click Get Started.

Sign in using your Instagram account details and choose nine photos. Once signed in your Instagram account will be connected to your Projecteo account.

Pay £5.75 ($8.99) and the company will print your wheel of photos and post them to you.

Put the wheel into the projector, press the red button to switch on the LEDs and point the projector at any vertical surface.

The makers claim that it works best in the dark but can be used during daylight.

The batteries will last for eight hours.

The Projecteo project was inspired after product designer Ben Redford came across an old projector in a London Market.

Mr Redford, from London-based digital design agency, Mint Digital, said: 'On taking it apart, I saw that the mechanics could be miniaturised and thought Instagram would bring the warmth to how we take photos now.'

Projecteo is a tiny Instagram projector that uses wheels of 35mm slide film that can be made online.



Each wheel holds nine photos and because slide film doesn't have pixels the tiny images won't appear pixelated or blurry when projected to a large wall.



The images will shine up to 2.5-feet wide.



To get the images onto the strip of film, they are are 'melted' on to a single frame of Kodak film, which is then processed in a similar way to how analogue films are developed, except in full colour.

The projector is a fully working system that uses pictures printed onto Kodak film instead of traditional slides. This means when the tiny images are beamed up to 2.5-feet wide on a wall they don't become pixelated

Inside the projector is a single LED light which projects the image when focused. It is powered by batteries which can be replaced

This is similar to how Hollywood film makers convert digital movies to 35mm film to project in cinemas.



'Whether they're of your best friends, that holiday last summer or good old pictures of cats, just pop them into Projecteo, focus by twisting the lens barrel and sit back to enjoy your slideshow,' claimed the Kickstarter campaign.



Redford added: ' I was enthralled by the warmth of the images it projected. There's no digital image that can match it.

'We started off by 3D printing early prototypes of Projecteo.



This image shows how the Projecteo measures up to a normal film projector. The mechanisms inside are exactly the same but Mint Digital scaled them down to make the Projecteo more portable

Sure, it was rough and stuck together with tape but it had enough charm to make us fall in love with the idea. We wanted to see how far we could take it.

'Through an iterative process we optimised the focal length of the lenses and added a focusing mechanism.



'We looked for the most powerful LEDs we could find, made the batteries replaceable and figured out the perfect ratio of images per wheel.



The Instagram images are first chosen via the GetProjecteo website, which send the order to Mint Digital. The company 'melts' the photos onto 35mm film, pictured, and fits the film to a slide carousel wheel that costs £5.75 ($8.99)

We modified the outside edges to give Projecteo a five degree chamfer, to make it a bit nicer to hold. Oh and of course, we gave it cute little feet.



Redford built the projectors with a Scottish product development consultancy called Meso.

The Projecteo projector costs £22 ($34.99) and the wheels are £5.74 ($8.99) each.

The films are developed and sent out from New York and shipping for outside the U.S is a minimum of £3 ($5).



The pictures are printed on Kodak film, with each frame being a mini slide carousel

Each carousel is then cut and placed in a special tiny holder which is placed in the projector VIDEO: Projecteo is the tiny Instagram projector





