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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.
Actually, all Mac laptops after the Mac Portable were called PowerBooks, even though they used 68k procs. The name has nothing to do with the processor. Daniel
My condolances sir, but neither did the early PowerBooks:
........
PowerBook 100
PowerBook 100
PowerBook 100
Well, you get the idea
So, exactly how DOES your sock taste?
--NBVB
Apple released a whole bunch of PowerBooks with Motorola 680x0 chips, way before anyone ever heard of the PowerPC line.
For instance: http://www.ou.nl/open/psl/pb100/#spec
~jeff
Congrats to the author of JPEGView... your program is now running on someone's picture frame :-)
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.
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!
Not while this story is on the front page of Slashdot, they won't.
- In Capitalist America, law violates YOU!
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.
Ok, first things first: Get the kid out of the militia he's in (against his will). Then get him fed, cleaned, clothed, a house, some basic education (ABCs, etc) and clean water.
Then, get him electricity, and then give him an old obsolete computer.
In the meantime, let people recycle things if they want to, its a good habit to have.
You can't take the sky from me...
why spend your time posting on slashdot when you could be building shelters for the homeless in Peru?
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...
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.
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
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
If i wanted to see 3D screensavers on my wall, I'd do what everyone else does, and take a hit of acid.
--fetch daddy's blue fright wig, i must be handsome when i release my rage
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?