I'm building a digital frame out of notebook parts, the screen is 12.5" Active TFT in good condition.. I am building the framing out of wood. Having a bit of difficulty trying to make a deep frame, I'm no wood worker
No mouse or keyboard will be attached or attachable since it will look like a genuine digital frame, I'm using non reflective glass, the frame is coloured black.
It's running Windows XP with autologon etc.. It is also wireless enabled.. Have UltraVNC installed if I need to make changes to installed programs, O/S settings etc.
I have got it so when XP boots up it doesn’t launch explorer, it will launch the slide show app full screen..

Now onto the real point of my post
What I'm looking for is some decent slide show software, obviously with the all the usual photo management features, such as albums, transition effects, sound capability, capability to play video files if they are in the album also etc...

What I really want the slideshow app to allow me to do is, to organise custom slideshows into albums, then when windows starts the program would auto launch with the first slideshow started. Ability to randomise which slideshow launches , ability to add new photos to the slideshow albums by drag n drop.

Can anyone recommend a particular type of slide show app that can do the above, or some other way?
Thought I'd ask here before I download a whole lot of trial editions to test

I have seen some software which allows you to build a slide show and create an executable for distribution. This isn't good enough as it needs to be manually added to the startup. Adding new photos requires rebuilding the exe file. When launched it unpacks the photos which takes time before it launches into a slideshow...

cheers

I'm not sure if you've seen this, but it looks like he's been doing something similar, and might be worth getting in contact with to see what software he's using?

I don't know about all your criteria for sure, but check out IrfanView and cam2pc (which is digicam extraction software, but has a kinda nice photo manager that'll do slideshows, I think).

One option might be to use PowerPoint. You could play some games with VisualBasic or whatnot to instruct PowerPoint to build your slide shows on the fly. PowerPoint gives you all the transitions you might ever want.

Windows Movie Maker can do most of what you want, but it's not automatic. It might be scriptable, though.

What's the total cost of your project so far? I'm interested in doing one of these myself, but wouldn't know where to start. I've seen one or two projects online, I think one used an older Apple laptop model or something. What parts did you use, and how much work was involved in piecing it all together?

I personally wouldn't care about video or sound - if I were making a digital picture frame then it would likely be purely for photos.

As such I'd stick a small linux distro on it with X, and autologin and run "xv -maxpect -wait 300 -wloop -root -rm 5 /path/to/photodir/*.jpg"

SImply adding or removing photos to that photodir would add or remove them from the display.

-maxpect   Scale to maximum size whilst maintaining aspect ratio.

-wait 300  Load next image after 300 seconds.

-wloop     Loop to beginning of image list when at end.

-root      Display in X root display, not as window.

-rm 5      Center image, non-tiling. 

Obviously, this doesn't help you much, but it might be useful for somebody wanting to do something similar.

You'd have to do something with the X cursor. And you'd have to rerun the script to get it to find new images, as the shell is interpreting the asterisk and specifying the exact files there at the moment it's run. You might be able to get xv to interpret the asterisk or just hand it the directory, the latter being more likely (tho I haven't tried it).

And there's no reason to autologin. (Autologin is evil.) Just have X start in a startup script with the xv app as its shell.

You'd have to do something with the X cursor.

Hmm. I use this technique on a desktop system and have gotten used to simply hiding the pointer in a corner. I wonder if it is possible to start X without a pointer? (Or change the pointer to be invisible?)

And you'd have to rerun the script to get it to find new images, as the shell is interpreting the asterisk and specifying the exact files there at the moment it's run. You might be able to get xv to interpret the asterisk or just hand it the directory, the latter being more likely (tho I haven't tried it).

I don't see this as much of an issue. I don't see the need for on-the-fly changes. I've always thought of a frame mounted in the wall like any regular photo that just happends to change image occasionally, ie something passive and not really interactive. I'd use a small low power SBC with a quick boot time. Pull the plug (Or break out the reset switch to somewhere handy). If I got really adventurous I'd cron a "killall xv; start_xv_script" for the early hours.

And there's no reason to autologin. (Autologin is evil.) Just have X start in a startup script with the xv app as its shell.

Yeah, that's a better hammer to crack that nut with.

I don't see this as much of an issue.

Nor I, but you did say:

SImply adding or removing photos to that photodir would add or remove them from the display.

which is not true as you specified it.

And it's pretty easy to make a blank cursor. Create a blank XBM:

#define blank_width 1

#define blank_height 1

#define blank_x_hot 0

#define blank_y_hot 0

static unsigned char blank_bits[] = {

   0x00};

save it as blank.xbm, and run "xsetroot -cursor blank.xbm blank.xbm".

Cripes, I didn't see that one coming. I've been Bitted.

Wow a pretty extensive write up of his project. Although he used normal reflective glass I wonder why, it's a little hard to see.

Well I worked for a company in the wireless division which also has a notebook repair center repairing Toshiba, Compaq/HP and NEC, it's not hard to come across some free notebooks/parts
I used a Toshiba Satellite 1730 notebook which is a Celeron 600Mhz, with 192MB Ram, I added a wireless minipci card. Has a 12.5" Active TFT screen.

So basically I've only spent money on buying the framing which has cost me NZ$60 so far.

OK I finally had time to complete my frame, I had the framing made up as I didn't really have time to do it myself. Im using anti-reflective glass. Total cost is NZ$100 (mainly for the frame) I got the notebook for free. So once I had the frame made up, I pieced it all together, I also rerouted the wiring for the power switch.
It's running windows xp media centre ed, and is 802.11b wireless enabled. I can control it via ultra VNC, also has web and ftp server running so I can upload photos. I have digital slideshow pro loaded on it, I like the album management of Picasa but it lacks some slideshow controls and I canno't autostart a slide show.

Here are some pic's lower res ones, I will soon upload to riocar.org more pictures..

Second Pic

Last one, this one has the flash showing

Very cool! How long did it take you to make?

Another slideshow program people may want to look at:

http://www.asterius-mediaworks.com/en/description_photoslide.htm

I'm currently using their Dr.Tag program to manage metadata in my MP3s. It's by far (by FAR) the best tag management/editing program I've seen to date. (ie. and I've heavily used: MP3TagStudio, Tag&Rename, ID3-TagIt)

I haven't tried the slide show program yet, but will soon. I want to see a list of transitions and they don't really provide a complete one on the web page. For a photoframe, you just have to have the "Ken Burns Effect" (the Pan and Zoom + Crossfade Apple uses in their photo screen savers).

Bruno

How could I have missed this cool idea when it was first posted!
Ive got an old 14" Wallstreet just begging for this treatment.

I wish work would let me raid the old laptops. We have a bunch of old Wallstreets... Mainstreets... Pismos and 101's (often incorrectly called Lombard). And some not-so old iBooks and Powerbooks of every configuration. RUnning Mac OS X's screensaver you wouldn't even need any stand-alone slideshow program.

Bruno

Well I started in June collecting the parts etc, then left it for a while didn't have time, and just finished it this month. I'd say it only took me a week or so working on and off.