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Homemade Digital Picture Frames?
kato writes: "I've been searching for months for the right parts to make a digital picture frame for my wall. I'm not trying to mount an entire PC in a frame, so I think an old laptop would be overkill. I've heard about devices such as the Audrey made by 3COM, the AOL Touchpad made by Gateway, the Cieva picture frame, and a few others, but each has its faults. Some are impossible to find, some require a service, and some aren't yet "hacked." I'd like the price to be cheap (under $100), the picture to be about 10" diagonally, and to be able to connect to the device (modem or network). Now that the MIT flea market is over, I'm stuck trying to find the parts online. I'm leaning towards the AOL Touchpad, which runs Mobile Linux, but no one has posted any attempts on how to get rid of AOL. Anyone have any ideas or success stories?" An earlier question pointed out this site, but I suppose buying one would take all the fun out of it. You also need to watch out for "subscription to our service required" frames...
The draw? Simple. I bought one as a Christmas gift for my parents. I upload pictures of my kids, and every few days they wake up to some new images. They don't need to think about it at all. They have a computer, but there's no way they'd ever get comfortable with the process of downloading an image and printing it, no matter how simple that seems.
The Ceiva is an OK solution. I haven't found any hacks for it. Their service is nothing special, but functional.
I just finished hacking my I-Opener that I bought on ebay (for 50 dollars) and I think it would be pretty plausible. Actually, I was thinking of surrounding the border with a frame and putting it up on the wall like a picture frame.
This doesn't answer the question at all, but what would be really cool is some kind of digital display that, once the display is set, doesn't require any power. You could plug it in to your computer, download a picture, then unplug it and put it on your desk, wall, whatever. I'd pay $100 for that!
Is there any such technology out there that does this -- some kind of persistent, no- or low-power display?
Yeah, for all you wise-akers out there, I know you can do the same thing with paper and a printer, but paper ceased to be cool about 2000 years ago.
I have long been waiting for the day when I can have literally wall-to-wall lcd (or whatever flat display is in at the time).
/. interactive poster (if I could afford the million dollar subscription for it... ("Dude! Your poster's expired!")).
I think texture-mapping your walls would be a lot cooler than wallpapering them- and less messy too! How long would it be before there was a "wood-chip" module where you could scratch the chips off like people annoyingly do after you've painted it?
Also I could mince around the room all day dragging my posters to different locations...
Imagine! No more agonizing in the shop over which clock, calander etc to buy- just run the applet of your choice!
Then there would be the
Actually I think makers of posters, art prints etc. would start getting aggressive when they found the "mp3" effect was hitting them.
Anyway, thanks for listening to my silly girlish fantasy, and now you can all reply with your lame jokes about "Windows for walls" (Any colour you like as long as it's blue....) etc.
graspee
you can pick one from ebay for about 70 bucks. Frame wise all you need to do is get rid of the spekers and put some neat looking frame around the lcd. As for the or, download Midori linux from transmettas website. Now to get the pics you can use the HPNA or ehtnernet adapter thats built in on the touchpad.
This isn't 100% relevant to making a photo frame, but I also don't think it warrants an entire thread of its own. So here's a supplementary question from me: Has anyone successfully hacked a laptop's TFT screen for use with other devices?
:)
Id est, have you successfully 'ripped' the screen from the laptop and interfaced it with stuff like an ordinary VGA, something that outputs video, pictures, whatever?
I'm trying to find more information on that. I have a couple of old laptops that can barely run X, and since I'm integrating a PC into my car, I thought it'd be nice to rip the TFT off of one and use it for in-car output. In the past, I've replaced some cabling connecting the laptop's on-board VGA card to the TFT screen and the entire system looked very weird to me. But I'm assuming it can be done, if the pinouts can be tracked down. Or I could be way off track
If anybody with more experience on this could point me to the right direction, I'd appreciate it.
So long, and thanks for all the fish
1.) Buy Audrey
2.) Open browser on audrey and point it to cgi-script on a box on network
3.) Make Browser full screen
4.) Have cgi script display an image, wait a few seconds and reload.
A couple of weeks ago, I had an idea similar to this. What I wanted was a device that had a 7" display that could act like a portable digital photo album.
My girlfriend likes to take pictures. She's not keen on getting a digital camera because she doesn't want to have to look at the pictures with a computer (let's put the printer conversation aside).
I figured that if she had a device that she could take with her, slide in a disc with the actual pictures on it, then she can browse the pictures away from her computer. So the theory is that she'd use her computer to compile albums on some form of disc (or something similar). These digital albums could then be taken and viewed using a portable device designed to input one of these discs, and display the photos on a 7" screen.
These digital frames are 1/2 way there.