Last year a chance meeting brought the negatives out into the open and eventually to a digital scanner with the work being catalogued by a team of volunteers.
It also currently needs to be wired to a computer to work, although NZIR says the scanner will be fully wireless by the time its ready to hit the market two years from now.
Both parties have to register their fingerprints using a biometric scanner that's plugged into the washing machine, which will only work if it scans a different finger than the one used before (you could also trick the machine and use two of your own fingers when you first set things up, but you'd only be fooling yourself right?).