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.

Comments

Re:Software

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure. Be super-clever during construction and allow a way for a MiniDock to hook up the the guts. Expect to pay almost as much as you paid for the Duo to pick up the MiniDock, but you'll then have Ethernet and and ADB. All the ports you need to fix, alter, change, or otherwise transmogrify your happy Duo. On another note, the Duos were the best sub-notebook ever, and the PowerBook 180c had the best screen ever.

Re:Software

[SethJohnson]

The article correctly notes that this model of powerbook does not have external ADB. It does have localtalk, which does support network protocols such as TCP/IP, so remote administrative tools such as timbuktu or VNC would work here. It would be dog-slow, but should work fine.

wow

[HeyZuess]

When a couple geeks invade New Yankee Workshop!

It does look pretty cool.

Touchscreen conversion

[FyRE666]

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.

Bridge the digital divide.

[Perdo]

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?

Re:Bridge the digital divide.

[Fred Ferrigno]

Uhm, as a computer, the Duo is a piece of shit. Why bother teaching kids about decades old computers? Might as well get them one of those "My First Computer" toys with the mouse with ears and whiskers.

Here's some I worked on...

[tsangc]

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

digital frame and firewall too

[njh]

We did this too, this time using a previous model Ti-book which had been dropped:

http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~njh/electronics/wal lmount/

This 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.

I did this with LEGOs and an old 486, see it at...

[nullgel]

http://www.nullgel.com/legoart.html

It's in the shape of a Gameboy.

Dynamic web pages on your picture frame

[TheViewFromTheGround]

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.