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If I add up the parts of the cartridge, I come to around $88 (including a $35 touch screen).

The demo makes me wanna take a picture like that and give the cartridge away. Maybe if it can get under $10 that would be feasible? And before that, at $20 or $30 they could sell them at theme parks where they take your picture in a roller coaster.

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The price of his battery and power converter are pretty insane, and a Raspberry Pi is convenient but overkill. Given a more price-conscious part choice and at least some volume (since what's the point in building only one cartridge), you should be able to get that to $5 plus display fairly easily. Suitable displays can be found for $10 from Amazon (shipped from China).

So you can probably home-build it for $15. If you're a startup in Shenzhen it might be feasible to sell them assembled for $10 and make a nice profit if you can sell a million of them.

I agree, this is something I built entirely with off the shelf parts so the cost is bound to balloon.. The cost can be brought down significantly like you said

I think most of the cost is just the tradeoff between getting stuff tomorrow, or one month later from china at a fraction at the cost. If money isn't an issue, paying more to get stuff faster is certainly more productive.

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