We met Jon Stam at a Maker Faire last year. With Simon de Bakker, he’s made the Bioscope: a Pi-driven nostalgia machine. Part art project, part toy, it’s extremely simple: upload any digital movie onto a USB stick, pop it in the back of the Bioscope, and peep through the viewfinder.

But rather than just watch the movie play away, you have to move it yourself along by turning the red handle. Pause by stopping the handle, rewind by turning it backwards: and the whole thing has a lovely jerky, old-timey feel to it; the vintage feel underscored by the 3d-printed case, which is based on a copy of an old Fisher Price movie projector toy.

Jon and Simon are using the Bioscope to make an artistic statement about the way we interact with moving visual media. We like it for its satisfying shape and feel, for the way it reminds us of toys we had as kids, and for the cameo appearance of the Numa Numa guy in the above video.

The Bioscope guys have created a custom PCB that sits on top of the Raspberry Pi, which allows you to power the device from a single 3.7v lithium-ion cell. You can find some more technical details of what the custom PCB adds at i.materialise, where Jon and Simon had the case 3-d printed.

Right now, there don’t seem to be any firm plans to commercialise the Bioscope – we hope Jon and Simon do take it in that direction, because there’s something enormously appealing about it. We’ll let you know if we hear anything.