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Old PowerBook + Hot Glue = Cheap Digital Picture Frame

Posted by timothy on from the no-subscrption-required dept.

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.

4 of 188 comments (clear)

  1. Some info on my pic frame project by dgenr8 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  2. ThinkPad version by HawaiianMayan · · Score: 5, Informative

    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!!! :-(

  3. eBay by The+Wing+Lover · · Score: 5, Funny
    Easy to find and inexpensive. 280c's are always up for auction on eBay and regularly sell for less than $100.

    Not while this story is on the front page of Slashdot, they won't.

    --

    - In Capitalist America, law violates YOU!

  4. Bridge the digital divide. by Perdo · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.