It has now been over six years since the InstaCRT project started (the app went live on AppStore a few months later). We spent a few late nights in the fall of 2012 trying to get a super basic and stupid version up and running. It worked ok, but since then everything has been rewritten many times, mostly to make the software as fast and stable as possible.

Since its launch, the machine has captured close to half a million photos, when the the heart of the project — the CRT display — gave up just before the summer. It has been up and running 24/7 all these years while the camera has been replaced twice and we’ve made countless upgrades to both software and hardware. When the CRT started to fade out (many of you noticed how dark the photos became at some point), we decided to shut the machine down for good.

When the app first launched in 2012, we got a lot of media attention around the world. From The Verge, Hack-a-day, Engadget and Fast Company Design to printed articles in glossy magazines. Since every photo has to be processed one-by-one the by the machine, the popularity sometimes made for very long queue times, at times up to 20+ hours.

Thanks for all the nice words, shared photos, messages, tweets etc etc etc over the years! It’s been a wonderful experiment and and honor to share it with everyone!

❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️
Martin, Ruben & Erik
Stockholm, September 2017

(Almost 100k views! 🎷)