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Old PowerBook + Hot Glue = Cheap Digital Picture Frame
option8 writes "Have an old laptop gathering dust? Here's another fun hack from Applefritter - this time utilizing an old Mac laptop (a Duo 280) but could be applied to pretty much anything with an LCD, and turning the guts into a cheap, flexible digital picture frame. Now, off to the flea market to pick up one of them cheap Duos I keep seeing..." As the author points out, this isn't a new idea -- but it's a great step-by-step.
Of course, a duo laptop was not a "Powerbook" because it didn't have a PowerPC processor. But who expects a "journalist" to know such a thing.
Come play Heroes of Might and Magic Mini online.
Hot PowerBook + Old Glue = expensive scrap metal on the floor
Regular Joe: THIS IS RETARDED! Who would waste their time like this when people in the world are starving!!
Ultra Geeker: STFU n00b! Hackers are cool!
Stereotypers - Unite!
-Dean
fp yay!
That's what I wanna know...with such an old-ass computer.
Congrats to the author of JPEGView... your program is now running on someone's picture frame :-)
Ive been looking for a lowend notebook at my local swap meets, never been able to find one. The swap meets here are populated with hundreds of 486dx33 maybe a pent90 or 2 every once and a while I'll see a mac but they always want too much money for them, never seen a laptop thoe, hmm
Seems like a waste of electricity to have it plugged in all the time (you do have to plug in it right?) Why not just have your picture printed and put it in a real frame? I know, it costs money, and it's only one picture -- but you can have as many of them as you want. If it had buttons where you could change the picture that would be cool.
That rules! How much can these old powerbooks be had for is the next question? I'd like to do something similar.
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
Cool idea - but it seems a bit of a risk to configure the software, then rip the laptop apart and hope it all works when it's hot glued back together. Plus, once it's set up, you wouldn't be able to change the slideshow settings.
Gotta be a more elegant hack for this. Any Mac experts with opinions?
Great article. I'm working on a laptop to picture-frame conversion too.
Mine is an old Toshiba 205CDS with 24 meg running Debian and hooked up to a new flat-panel display, so the display itself is the frame.
The software is Mozilla 1.1 in full-screen mode. It simply tunes into a page on a web server (could be the same server, but in my case it's not) that serves up refreshes are regular intravals. My friends and family have access to a web page where they can directly upload their pictures into my frame and provide captions. They can also build pages of their own and just sent the URL (this is a big advantage of having a real browser running in the frame).
The poster was a lot more ambitious than me in many ways. I never even thought of chopping up the laptop and making such a professional-looking package. Now I think at least I'll get rid of the laptop's LCD panel.
zgv is a nice image viewer, very reminscent of the DOS VGA viewers. Slap it onto an old laptop with an old ethernet or slip serial connection and you can be all set...
Here's another page where somebody did this with a ThinkPad. (This one's not so involved; the guy just flipped the keyboard back behind the screen).
:-(
Make sure you only try this on a computer you don't care about losing!!! I killed a NEC laptop messing around with this. Those ribbon connectors between the LCD and the motherboard are FRAGILE!!!
Well, that does it for me. I'm definately going to switch now!
The whole "set it and forget it" concept is ludicrous, especially if you know Duos. But the concept is cool. Two fixes that make it a lot more appealing (IMVHO)..
1) Just put an ADB port on the side. This is difficult? Then when you want to change pictures (hey there's a thought) or run the new updated JPEGView, you can.
2) Above, plus Localtalk/Ethernet, and let it pull pictures off your G4 in the office.
3) Hack a WiFi card into it, and control it via VNC or Timbuktu.
NOW you're talking!
Or you could always turn it into a fishtank. No one's ever done that.
"The pie shall be cut in half and each man shall receive.....death. I'll eat the pie."
Not while this story is on the front page of Slashdot, they won't.
- In Capitalist America, law violates YOU!
I just picked up a Thinkpad 560 on ebay cleap and am doing the same sort of thing, but a little differently.
Instead of putting the images on the laptop, I just setup an X server with a wireless card and from my main box (which has all the images on it and displays my photo album via a web interface), I dump the image on the remote X display via the wireless connection.
Now if I could only get wireless power I wouldn't need any cords...
...and thinks it kicks ass! C'mon people, why build something as excessive as a digital picture frame out of something somebody else could actually use.
Anyone know any popular brands of x86 laptops that had small screens (say 10" or so) which might be on ebay cheap these days? I'd love to build one of these things, but I don't want to bother with appletalk, etc.
It works on iBooks too!! Cool!
It does look pretty cool.
It'd be cool to see a hack like this that added maybe a couple of buttons just behind the edge of the frame, or better still a touchscreen. This would give so many more options - such as it doubling up as a front-end to a burglar alarm, web browser, email client, MP3 player or whatever else could be used with minimal controls.
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
Laptop screens cant be on all the time esp old ones I've sceen many a laptops screens getting totaly hosed after being on all night, I left a p200 12tft screen with a friend 2 months after I bought it (2700$)(he dint have a computer and I dint need it at the time) and he turned off power management and fell asleap with it on when he wone up the right side of the screen had melted, I was pissed to say the least
Introducing a new picture frame that's:
-With a built in Fan so you can hear just how hot your picutres are!
-Visible only from certain angles to keep prying eyes from seeing your precious photos
-Capable of being infected by a virus or taken out by a trojan. Imagine all the fun and games when some hacker draws a swastika on grandma's forehead
-Ugly to prop up while showing your eternal love for unnecessary keyboards
-Runs for almost 2 hours without plugging in!!!
-Consumes just 15 watts per hour so it only costs you about $50 a year in power costs
And if you act now we'll throw in a free screen saver to prevent pesky burn in.
Ummm really, is this progress?
Yes I like the idea of VNC, but I don't think this model has a PCMCIA slot, but you can use a Newertech microdock for ethernet networkability.
Also according to apple-history.com this model only consumes 25W of power, making it pretty cost effective.
theres a few 486 toshiba laptops out there with 9" screens the drawback being there not compatable with linux and the color depth is only 8 bit but do to the small size you cant tell less your up close
I don't think I've ever seen that happen. Can anyone else get through to them?
Damn...I completely forgot to mail him a card!
stupid fucking story but a bunch of twits that waste their time on it. read a book, walk the dog, then bitch slap the idiot that posted the original.
god damn killagram, how do ya figga? I don wanna be called yo nigga!
LINUXISFORBITCHESDOTCOM - learn it, love it.
You could get enough bucks for one of those notebooks to almost cover the cost of a small 15" panel which is going to be MUCH brighter than a notebook screen, which is optimized for battery life, not vivid color. Then all you need is a good quality extended VGA cable, a drill, and some creativity to mount a PC whereever you want. It will also look quite nice, and is very easily dissassembled - with proper connectors.
Hide the motherboard someplace, it's not that difficult - nail it to the wall, stash the case behind a sofa, get a miniATX board - many choices. Configure the hard drive to spin down and load the images into memory, which the slideshow program should do easily. Most older machines will run low-intensity tasks a-ok, espeically under linux, with no cpu fan attached - remove it. PC gear, especially used, is so damn cheap it's almost stupid.
Then you have a much more functional unit that can do other things.. I was thinking of putting something like this in the kitchen, except set up to display the current weather forecast, the status of my servers, and a couple webcam shots of my workplace so I can see what's going on.
IMHO this is a pretty poor application for an unwanted notebook. They're great for a email machine or something to surf channel listings in the TV room, though. Especially if you get 802.11 on the go for your house, which I absolutely love.
My $0.02cdn
Steve
..don't panic
Many DVD players now support picture cds, so you can just go to ebay and buy one of these 5 inch LCDs for about $40, stick the LCD into a picture frame, and have a digital picture frame for less money and less work... (did i mention that the resolution isn't great? oh well, we can't have it all).
Yawn.
it dosen't run linux! what self respecting ghetto hardware hacker creates a ghetto hardware hack not running linux! :p
[end scarcasm]
seriously though.. that frame turned out great, I might consider building one myself, although it would be much more flexable running *nix (uploads via ftp or smb, remote access, etc) but I don't know about getting x to run on a duo, heh
You've got a very capable little machine there. There are all sorts of other doodads you could use on that for different decorating plans. Having several of these, each running 3D screensavers, around your living room would be quite striking.
The new apple iFrame.
I can see the investors cringing now.
The picture frame that the Discovery Channel Store sells, made by Ceiva, that is found here, charges a monthly fee plus initial purchase price. Imagine having a few of these frames for a few years.. adds up quick.
Or visit his site. Now a mame hacker.
aarongiles.com
Apparently he received somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 postcards, although I'm sure he'd be happy to get a couple more.
Adding a 802.11b card would make for all kinds of yummy uses, besides uploading pictures, it would be cool to run that program which sniffs graphics going over the air...
I do not care.
Before you turn your laptop into a picture frame, consider giving it to a student or child that will never have a computer of their own without assistance.
How did your first computer change your life?
Would you be where you are today without having had it?
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
Were you being sarcastic about the fishtank? Have you seen these?
digital picture frames....
why on earth would I want a picture that I need to plug in and pay electricity for?
Dont you have some nice paper and a printer?
Finally, something a Mac has a high enough frame rate to handling! He was probably inspired by first person shooter games that, on a Mac, look like a slide show.
Yeah, I know. Troll. Flamebait.
P.S. If you are a Mac user, don't get your panties in a twist and start posting benchmarks. It was just a joke.
Fuck! My picture frame crashed!
Mod me down, and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
Picture frame? Save the dollar they cost at a garage sale.
Slow news day, I guess. Didn't anything important happen in the entire world of computing?
Wasnt there a thing with powerbooks catching fire a while back?
draw your own conclusions...
http://peach.mie.utoronto.ca/people/tsangc/frame10 0-index.html
I did this with a friend using a PowerBook 100. I also have a PowerBook 520C one too...
http://peach.mie.utoronto.ca/people/tsangc/journal -frame520running.jpg
And here's my friend Victor's:
http://www.chuma.org/projects/pictureframe/
Calum
A digital picture frame is already made by a company called Ceiva, you can find out more here
It's only like $100 from some places, and it can either be in single-picture or slide-show mode. Plus, it dims in low light and a button can advance you forward.
The only catch is that it's a subscription service, and you have to pay like $5 a month, but it's still a nice piece of technology.
"Hot glue and a cheap frame"
Can't you guys think about anything besides sex?
So he had to have something to do...
We did this too, this time using a previous model Ti-book which had been dropped:
http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~njh/electronics/waThis ti-book provides a firewall, airport basestation, digital frame and interface to our heating unit, and all for less than 50W continuous power :) The LCD frame stayed on as we agreed it looked nice anyway, and nobody could find a small enough torx screwdriver to open the case.
And yes, typing on the keyboard is hardwork.
It's in the shape of a Gameboy.
I have a Panasonic CF01 tablet pc, which has a docking station that sets it up pretty much exactly like a picture frame.
It set me back about $300 a year ago.
Best of all, no work needed at all.
Jon Acheson
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
Assuming that you have a network connection, a solution that could run on many operating systems and be very effective would be to install a web server/database combination (like LAMP) and view with a browser that runs in full-screen/near-full-screen mode.
A simple web design could put your image in the frame's viewing area and hide any OS-junk. With a few scripts in a language like ColdFusion or PHP connected to a database of images, one could easily create a picture frame server. Upload an image to the correct directory via FTP and it gets put in the display queue automatically. Use META REFRESH tags or some other reload method to cycle through images.
It would be easy and free to use ColdFusion with Apache and MySQL or some other database to make this all happen. There are single IP developer versions of the ColdFusion 5 and MX server available at Macromedia's website. Either of these would be enough to set up an image server really quickly with the caveat that ColdFusion 5 is way more stable on Linux than ColdFusion MX. Because you can simply upload to the server via FTP, the single IP limitation isn't so bad. On the other hand, if you already know something like PHP, that might be the way to go.
One question that I have is this: would be possible to cut up a keyboard and attach new buttons to it that could be mounted on the front and back of the frame and could allow the OS to be rebooted?
If that's possible, then another advantage of using a browser would be image control. Because Javascript can log keystrokes and then do things. Because you get to pick which browser the system runs on, you don't have to worry about compatibility and accessibility issues. Forward and back buttons mapped to any keys on the keyboard could control the image and those buttons could be mounted on the frame.
Finally, to respond to the digital divide comment: I work in Chicago's public housing projects (the poorest neighborhood in America) and I've given lots of computers to residents of the development where I work. Honestly, nobody needs or wants a Duo 280c. A good activist and hacker should continue to have fun making and hacking and breaking things while being generous and helping others. Things like this aren't excessive or selfish as much as creative gestures that show that it's people who should be the ultimate beneficiaries of technology.
Online citizen journalism from the inner city: The View From The Ground
Seems like a lot of trouble to go through (although I"m impressed by the big screen). I picked up a Kodak picture frame last winter when computergeeks was blowing them out for $100. It has no subscription and reads compact flash. The screen's not huge (4x6) but it looks great in its cherry wood frame. Just set it on slide show and away it goes. There is about a four-second space between each slide. I especially like the fact that it doesn't crash on me.
I bet this guy has a ton of these old laptops. Now he can unload them to all the Slashdot geeks on Ebay...
A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over. -Benjamin Franklin
So will we ever see a picture of this "mod" on those crazy sites?
This SIG pulled due to lack of funding. (This damn war is costing too much!)
I have couple of Compaq Contura Aero Laptops laying around in storage. It's a really shitty device and got windows 95 installed on it.
I wonder if it's possible to go through the same conversion with those. Because essentially it's the same concept and the dimensions are the same too, compared with Duo 280
Or the real question would be, is it worth the trouble? Alternatively I could wipe the windows from there and install tiny linux. Is it a good good idea? I have some time to burn
"Why didn't this guy send his laptop to a school instead of turning it into a picture frame?"
"Why didn't that guy feed his old computer to the hungry instead of mashing it in a hydrolic press?"
Here's why: **It's his stuff to do with as he pleases**
I just don't understand how people, who obviously have more money than they *absolutely need* if they're able to read Slashdot instead of tending the fields all day, can sit in judgement over others in this regard. Just because you give an old computer or two away doesn't make you Mother Teresa; I bet the underpriveleged kiddies would love a brand new top-of-the-line computer, too. Hop to it, Daddy Warbucks.
That is impressive. Great job.
Although you're going to hell for he windows Logo.
Heh, I was afraid of that. I tried to justify myself in the description. No avoiding it, I supppose.
yah... up da poop schoot
really late entry into the flame,...just here for historical reasons,...
Apple has done alot for open source, more than M$ has at least of late. I really can't see why anyone would argue,...your're arguing about the same sides to the same coin. Mac OSX and Linux are in the same boat.
While everyone is crying about M$,...we should tear the open OS movement apart because some don't think the hardware is open enough? At least Apple is trying,...have you checked out "Palidumb". Historically, Apple has encouraged innovation,...not with open hardware (which would be nice) but with their hands off attidute with what people do with their own information. There is no DRM in APPLE. I love open source, I push it whererver I can... but to be snobbish about it is lame. Put that interface on Linux, put it on any operating system, make it easy to use,....that's what Linux has been dying for and Apple is the ones who can actually bring it to the people.
Sorry, but in an OS war, Gnome, Lindows (come on????), as good as it is will not be the thing that makes most people to "switch",...it will be OS X. Apple is doing a great job, and rumor has it that they've developed OS X on a x 86, so,....no mre fighting...were all on the same team anyways, right?
My first thought was: why not add a mini dock to the picture frame?
;-)
But then again, that would be pretty easy to do compared to the making of the frame itself. Thus, one should hack the slot-in Duo Dock so it accepts the frame.
That would give you not only ethernet but also a NuBus slot. With an old video grabbing card you'd be able to upload video clips to the picture frame. *drool*
...of recycled obsolete apple laptops....
Let's post a link to a site that has had this up for over a year. Time for the yearly Applefritter link.
Wouldn't it make more sense to modify the screen to open all the way back or mount the screen on the back of the laptop? This way you wouldn't loose the keyboard etc. That's my $0.02!!
Why not modify the screen to fold all the way around or mount the screen on the back of the laptop? This way you would still have access to the keyboard etc.
Get an Audrey instead...
Just from curiosity, what is the power cost for running this for a year?
I assume it will be running with the LCD active 24/7. Nothing seemed to imply a normal time-based shutdown (as if anyone here keeps "normal" hours anyway...) so that seems a valid assumption.
That said, what's the power usage for this, and therefore what is the approximate cost to run this for a year?
No, I'm not an eco-freak, I just like to know how much something will cost before before I jump in and do it.
This says 36Watts for the Duo 2300C. Okay.
36 * 24hours = 864watt-hours.
365 days of this = 315360 watt-hours, about 315kilowatt-hours.
My power company charges me about 6 cents per kilowatt-hour. This will cost about $19 per year in energy costs for me.
Amazing, that's actually low enough to be acceptable.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is... Oops. Frank, I've got your sig again! Where's mine?
Check the linux/m68k page if you're thinking of putting linux on this, installing a null-modem adapter on the serial port, and having a remotely-addressable picture frame. 68LC040s are VERY FLAKY, and the 280c is one of the first using this cpu.
;)
The 270c, same cpu speed but 68030, has a built-in FPU (68LC040 FPU emulation can lock the cpu)
Check the m68k hardware requirements in the FAQ for more info..
Hmm, I might actually do this... Any linux serial 802.11 recommendations?
I remember going to a party at worcester polytechnic institute where kids had one of these going like 5 years ago. You guys, whoever you are, should sue for 10s of dollars.
The perfect machine to convert to a digital picture frame you ask? The AT&T Globalyst 250 (in either 75, 100, or P75 Mhz flavors) !!! Why you ask again? Because the LCD panel pops off (no tools required ...) and can then be flipped around! It can fold flat against the keyboard (tablet like ...) or can be set at angle if you like. The machine was originally designed for presentations. Put away the screwdriver, gluegun etc. Here is a solution that is all but ready made and available on Ebay ... I know 'cause I sell them there!!
No mods required either! Unfortunately, it pulled the anchor bolt out of the wall and fell on my cat. I miss that cat. Still trying to figure out what to do next with the Monorail.
Dewd, I'm in the same camp as you. Mac plus, 40 mb JASMINE harddrive, and I did it all.
But can you run a modern web browser on a mac plus? (Oh sure, you can hack a web server into one, such as camneerG, but...)
But until you can get AOL 6.0 running on the 68000 processor I don't think you are going to have enough of a draw for the average person to want some old, crappy hardware.
SURE- they can type papers on it, but does it have enough to hold their interest? For you and me, the mac plus was enough. But I think for most it isn't.
just my two bits. I'd actually LOVE to be proven wrong!
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
If anyone has any questions, I'm the original author of the AppleFritter article.
Both the server and the network handled the load just fine!
digital.forest rocks!
Let's see, what are my options?
A))) Buy Duo for $100, waste all day hacking it to get a 5x7 photo
B))) Buy any Epson Photo printer made in the last 2-3 years for less than $100, sit back in the Lazy-E-Boy and let the printer churn out 8x10s. Sure ink's expensive, but you can get about twenty 8x10s from a new $25 color cartridge, and if it's a older Epson Photo you could probably refill the cartridge for only a few bucks, or if you're really ambitious get a chip-resetter. When you're done not only do you have lots of 8x10s, you still have a very useful printer on your desk instead of a pile of laptop plastic in your garbage.
Don't get me wrong, a digital picture frame is a oh-so-cool geek toy, but it's not the most bang-for-the-buck method of creating your own frameable pictures.
Besides, have you *seen* the type of people that usually end up in digital picture frames? Not the most photogenic....
- 16-bit color at 640x480
- the back of the frame could house the keyboard and trackpoint
- the OS is loaded on ROM, and the data stored on Flash (no HD = no moving parts)
- it would have up to 8 hours battery life so you could watch pictures when the power goes out
- update pictures easily via serial, IR, CF, or PCCard interfaces
- cheeappp on EBay (@ $100)
Of course all the anti-MS types will be turned-off by the low price and uncomplicated interface....If money isn't really a question, and if I could choose between the two I would certainly pick this/this.
...just a small TFT LCD display would cost you substantially more than that on digikey... it could be worth it to get one of these just for the parts...
I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
Older VAIO 505's are worth next-to-nothing these days... the 200 and 233mhz 505 and 505f tend to go for less than $300, and they had nice bright 10" SVGA TFT displays. I'm actually considering doing this to an old vaio that's no longer road-worthy...
I used an IBM Thinkpad 560 for my digital picture frame. I didn't make it as clean looking on the back but left the entire laptop (except for the display) intact. It has a 486 processor and runs Windows 95 with a wireless adapter in it. I use Sunbelt remote admin to work with it wirelessly and really all I need to do is add photos to the directory the slideshow app is running from. Works excellent and the 10" display fit perfectly into a 8x10 picture frame. The kids love it!
Anyone still reading this thread?
I won a crappy old Thinkpad on eBay yesterday. 10.4" TFT screen. The screen is a little bigger than I wanted, and it's only 8 bit, but for 50 bucks even if I end up not liking the results, who cares? Anyone else starting to build one of these?
Two ideas: Something like net booting a scaled-down version of Linix (or similar) and retrieving the photos from a server - either via ethernet or wireless? OR Engineer a hack so that the complete OS (scaled) and photos could be loaded onto a digital media card - no HDD necessary?
Apple laptops are effectively unusable for unix users.
I am a long-time Unix user. That means I need to have the Ctrl key to the left of the A key. This is a genuine need , not merely a want; it is based upon ergonomics. The Ctrl key is heavily used in unix, and it must be easily accessable. It cannot be off in the lower left corner of the keyboard where it is difficult to get at, and where it distorts the position of your left hand such that you can't easily type other keys while holding the Ctrl key down.
Apple desktop keyboards are now all USB. They are all OK. The CapsLock key can be re-mapped into a Ctrl key.
Unfortunately, even in this modern age, all Apple laptops have built-in ADB keyboards. The ADB keyboard is broken-by-design. It is, in general, not possible to remap the CapsLock key into a Ctrl key.
There are some exceptions, but they are horrible kludges. They are horrible kludges because the original design of the ADB keyboard was a horrible kludge. The correct solution would be for Apple to re-design their laptop motherboards to use built-in USB keyboards. This hasn't happened yet. If you run Linux, use Debian's solution. For Mac OS X users, uControl works. There are no solutions (that I know of) for either NetBSD or OpenBSD. Please note once again that the "solutions" above are in fact kludges, because of the original bad design of the ADB keyboard.
Apple is (currently) ignoring Unix users! This is not merely speculation on my part. In an on-going email exchange I am having with an Apple employee (whom I won't name) in their marketing department, the Apple marketing person directly stated to me that Apple was catering to their historic Mac customers, and is purposely ignoring the Unix market. He also claimed that Apple would soon start paying more attention to the Unix market. I won't hold my breath. Apple has been ignoring Unix users for more than 10 years. I expect that trend to continue. (Also note that my Apple contact indicated that Macs would never ship with a 3-button mouse, even though Apple intended to port almost all X-window software and deliver it either on a CD/DVD or installed directly on each Mac's hard drive. How Unix friendly is a 1-button mouse with X programs that often require 3 buttons?)
Apple has now lost two opportunities to sell me hardware. I really wanted an Apple laptop for their superior battery life, and for the PowerPC with Altivec CPU. (The Altivec is vastly superior to the x86 line for DSP.) Because I can't live with the broken-by-design built-in ADB keyboard in all Apple laptops, Sony and IBM sold me laptops instead. If Apple fixes this problem, they will sell me a PowerBook next year; if they don't, I'll still be running OpenBSD on x86 hardware, and wishing I could use a Mac.