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Lite Linux Distros for a Digital Picture Frame?

Posted by Cliff on from the all-in-one-solution-for-embedded-home-projects dept.

bwy asks: "I'm building a digital picture frame, inspired by a story here at Slashdot. Currently, I'm using Red Hat 9 with GDM autologin, icewm, and a slideshow program autostarting. I've installed code to hide the mouse pointer and the 'powerswitch' kernel module to allow the frame to run a proper shutdown (instead of a suspend) when the ATX power switch is pressed. The hardware is an EPIA 5000 with a laptop drive. I think this is overkill, however, and I am a purist. Is there a lightweight distribution that is EPIA friendly? Such a distro shouldn't install GCC, so I'll need all the software as binaries. How would I go about booting from a ramdisk? This would make the 'powerwitch' kernel mod not so important since there is no worry of corrupting the file system." Does anyone have distribution suggestions, or pointers to other information that might be helpful for such a project?

8 of 56 comments (clear)

  1. Woah! Overkill! by Kevin+Burtch · · Score: 4, Interesting


    I'd recommend building yourself a simple "run from RAM" setup using Knoppix (or something similar), and install it on a CompactFlash card.
    CompactFlash has several data transfer modes, one of which is essentially IDE.
    Yes, you can take one of those ultra-cheap PCMCIA->CompactFlash adaptors, rip it apart and solder on a parallel IDE cable (google for it, it's common), and plug it right into your motherboard. I just googled for it myself, and found that CompactFlash-IDE adaptors are now being sold, so you don't even need to get your soldering iron out.

    Now you've eliminated the hard drive, so you don't have to worry about the various issues associated with them, and you've eliminated the issue with powering off the device while it's running.

    --
    - Preferences: Solaris 10 (servers), Ubuntu (desktops), Solaris 11 (personal servers) -
  2. thoughts, ideas... by rusty0101 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    since you are concerned about the mouse pointer, I presume you are running a full X implementation. Have you considered running this as a framebuffer applicaiton, and not loading X? fbv, fbi and DFBSee are all projects on Freshmeat that may provide you a way to bypass the running of X.

    You could also do bootable CD-RWs that you can update the contents of your image library at any time, with any cdrw capable computer.

    Just a couple thoughts to kick around.

    -Rusty

    --
    You never know...
  3. Bootp by ADRA · · Score: 3, Interesting

    If your On-board NIC supports it, run everything on another PC with BOOTP/NFS if you really want to. You'd be able to change everything on the fly.

    Mind you, if everything's setup already, i'd just let it be.

    --
    Bye!
  4. Gentoo or Pebble? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Red Hat seems really stuffy for this kind of thing...

    I have some teeny boxes (Soekris 4501 and EPIA something) .. one uses Pebble (http://www.nycwireless.net/pebble/) and the other gentoo.

    I'm not sure if Pebble has GUI or X stuff, but it is based on Debian. It is actually optimized for wireless use. It runs read-only off the CF card so it is safe to just cut the power. You can probably hammer that into shape.

    Gentoo is something else I'm playing with, using distcc for compiling (i.e., no compiling on the local host, just over the network). The supercoolness of Gentoo is that you can build your own custom profile with all the settings and packages just the way you like them, and reinstall the whole thing from scratch whenever you want. Throw in a wireless card so you can pull the images off a server as well as locally and you've got a cool project.

  5. Picture frame with Media reader & NAS by TheMysteriousFuture · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I've been considering building a Digital Picture frame also.

    I want to be able to insert my CF (SmartMedia, MMC, etc) Card into a "52,000-in-one" USB reader, hit a Transfer button and have the images transfered to my RAID'ed network attached storage (probably a samba share). Then have the option to erase the CF card

    Have files renamed based on the EXIF information imbedded in the JPEG headers when they are transfered to the storage server
    (for example, 2004-05-25_021544b YYYY-MM-DD_HHmmss and if that already exists append a letter), or perhaps the creation date of the image file depending on how hard it proves to read the EXIF info.

    A simple interface to go through the pictures would be nice (not sure exactly what's already out there)

    I was thinking something along the lines of Hardware buttons along the bottom of the frame, one each for going forward and back a year, month, day, and then per image.

    Also maybe a dial to vary the speed of the slide show mode, and a "bookmark image" button...hrm yeah that'd be nice.

    The general idea is to end up with a device that even grandma can use to view her pictures, and stick her camera card in and hit one button to transfer the pictures to a automagically backed up, raid'ed server.

    Does this sound doable (without an insane amount of work :p)? Anybody have any sugestions, comments, want to tell me I'm an idiot, etc?

    Some Rights Reserved, (C) 2004 TheMysteriousFuture

    --
    .sig
    1. Re:Picture frame with Media reader & NAS by wimbor · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Well, If you are planning to do all that, I would at a touch screen LCD instead of normal buttons. Nicer design... :-)

      Good Luck!

  6. My Pictureframe by superid · · Score: 2, Interesting
    I started down this same road shortly after seeing the /. article mentioned by the poster. I have nearly identical hardware too with an EPIA 800 and a laptop drive. Since drive space and memory were not at a premium I decided to not go with an anorexic installation but rather just a trim one.

    I chose to use Fedora. I did not load X Windows and instead used fbv from an autologin console. I found it very useful to have lots of console tools (lynx, wget, gcc) available to me. And basically there was no benefit in trying to trim disk usage by a few hundred Meg.

  7. Linux might be overkill... by gozar · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I recently finished putting together a digital picture frame. I bought an old IBM thinkpad from eBay ($10) and a power adapter (another $10 from eBay).

    This is a 486 with 2 MB of ram and only a floppy drive. A DOS boot disk boots the machine, sets up a ramdisk, copies the pictures to the ramdisk, and then runs a slideshow with pictures from the ramdisk. Totally silent and heat issues are non-existant.

    I haven't had time, but I'm just going to make up a couple of disks with different categories of pictures. A nature disk, family disk, etc. I just have to reboot the machine when I want to a different category. I resize all the pictures to 640X480 (resolution of the screen) so they are pretty small (50k) and I can fit quite a few on a floppy.

    My next project will be to wire a timer into the display switch that detects movement. Once movement is detected it switches on the display for a preset time. That way I don't have to worry about the screen being on for the 16 hours a day I'm at work or asleep.

    My biggest complaint is that I didn't do my research on the laptop. The passive matrix screen really blows.

    --
    What, me worry?