Wireless Digital Photo Frames

http://www.photovu.com seems to be what you're looking for.

* They're simple to use
* They're wireless
* They fetch multiple RSS feeds directly
* They're big (17, 19, and 22 inches) and very high resolution

Only problem is that they're ridiculously expensive compared to something like that e-starling. Also I can find nothing on their website regarding any availability in the UK.

They do look interesting and I wouldn't rule them out purely on the basis of the cost. The lack of UK availability is a problem though.

WEP only, no WPA -- that's a deal killer.

They claim it might appear in a future software update, but an annual "Software Maintenance plan" (feeware) is required to even find out about possible future upgrades.

Duh.

One of us should really get our act together, and make/sell a tiny (gumstix size) Linux gizmo to drive generic PC LCD displays over DVI-D (or an HDTV screen over HDMI via adapter..).

It would easily sell tens of thousands of units, and wouldn't need to be priced more than $100-$200. The idea is that it would supply the "digital photo frame" smarts, and drive just about any single-link LCD display of the customer's choosing.

I want five of them here.

This is a popular request - I know I'm interested

I wonder what could be done to make an opensource picture frame? Open hardware? At the very least different component builds with a list of components and instructions on how to assemble?

This guy used an old laptop but that needs people to find just the right second hand hardware - not the right approach.

* supersmall super lowpower svga/lan capable motherboard with wake-timer/wol
* or a *really small* PC (5W apparently) :
* low power lcd screen with tiny bezel suitable for picture-framing
* connectors
* nice hardwood picture frames (I knew there was something Mark could do)

The software is probably easy by comparison...

Sod it
I just registered openpictureframe.org + com - lets see...

Hurricane?

Available in batches of 100 - that's 5 for Mark, 3 for me and 92 going begging...
Hmm, I'll keep looking

ah...
this looks better

oh wait ....
That's the one

A bit pricey if you go for their case but looks like a viable starting point...

Pico-ITX IA32 is way overkill for this application. What those of us with home servers probably want is more like the Displaylink stuff, where it's not much more than a wifi-attached framebuffer and the smarts are on the PC. Not that that would suit Andy's parents, but even they would be better off with some little ARM board. Some of the commercial photo frames probably have Sigmatel chips in, but they're done by Sigmatel Waltham (i.e. not Cambridge or Austin) and I've no idea what the software is like.

Peter

Well, it's OS - there's no reason to limit it to a single solution

I agree that the power's not 'needed' but I found that board based on cost and availability - and honestly it's having the flexibility to innovate in the software that's the key for me.

I can see that a simple 'lash up' of a mini-iTX, an lcd display and a nice frame running an OS OS would solve Andy's problem in time for Christmas
(and provide a more bespoke solution than the multi-$000 one, *and* be made by hand like all the best presents )

I'm going to look for an lcd display with a tiny bezel and a very low power consumption. I'm thinking 19" minimum though - this is a wall-hanging solution, not a mantlepiece.

The hardware for such a product is about the easiest thing to get together. At least for a one-off. It's a little harder if you want to design something from scratch for mass production. But in all cases, the biggest development costs and difficulties will be in the software. That's where such a device lives or dies and what will eventually make all the difference to the consumer/user.

Recognizing this and also recognizing that there were no pre-made programs to do the while thing very wel, I decided to keep it as simple as I knew how.

I made a frame for my brother this past spring using an old Mac notebook. The slideshow is run using its screen saver and nothing more. The screen saver does zooming/panning and cross-fading (Ken Burns effect) which generally looks a lot better than commercial products. The frame was purchased at Ikea and the case to hold the computer parts was made by myself - pretty straight forward and simple design/implementation.

I took photos of the whole process but have yet to write anything up. Like creating your own software for such a product, that can be the most time consuming and difficult part.

In the end I spent more than I could have bought one for. But it ended with a 12" screen, better transitions, two gigabytes of internal flash storage, an additional 30GB of HD space that holds nothing more than the OS, WiFi, the ability to turn itself on/off on a schedule and of course the satisfaction of knowing I did it myself. And it means a lot more to the people I gave it to because of that as well.

Setting it up with dynamic DNS service one could share its resources and upload to it from the internet. Or even access it with Apple Remote Desktop or free VNC.

I suppose I'm thinking a bit 'in between'.

I was looking for a more 'off the shelf' or guided approach to make it accessible to more people. I know *I* could just (probably!) hack one together but I was hoping that it may be feasible to look for easily obtained components and design something that was accessible to more people - there aren't *that* many people out there that would attempt, from cold, to rip a laptop apart to do this - but I suspect that there are a lot who would follow a guide... especially one with a shopping list. Although there's always the problem then becomes keeping it up-to-date as hardware changes.

I was also looking at bigger screens - I want a 19" one - and they cost in at £135. So some details on VESA mounting, some suggestions as to frame design, which model screens have the best construction for this kind of approach; which have good standby power etc etc. Hints to mount an old laptop behind a screen - how to silence a laptop; using CF drives instead of hdd drives; even network boot instructions?

I don't have the expertise to even consider progressing peter's suggestion - however if others did take it forward then having 1 pico-iTX (or laptop or similar) display and several slave wifi-framebuffers would be interesting...

And I'm not wedded to pico-iTX - it's not cheap!
It may even be better to look for a very low-end laptop to sacrifice.
I really don't know
Hell, I'm lucky that SWMBO can bring home the odd old laptop destined for the skip - but suggestions gratefully received...

I would *love* a thin client that controlled a simple 3D GPU chipset - especially if I could rig it inside a 19" monitor case and use the monitor PSU etc...

I agree about the software - but it's not *that* hard. I'm thinking of a debian/ubuntu based (simply because I know it ) mini distro.
Use as many OTS components as possible and look at the hardware requirements to determine selection/behaviour

So the package selection is driven by: Do you have:
* 3D graphics
* sound
* wifi
* any peter-frame clients
*...

There's a little utility called gliv which looks like an interesting base - it does slideshows, has a 'server' concept and works with and without GL. (I've always wanted to do openGL code...)

I've already got my laptop running with a minimal install and displaying pictures - I just need to package it now

Here's the platform we need. Not as small as it could be, but cheap enough not to worry:

http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS5305482907.html
http://www.clubit.com/product_detail.cfm?itemno=A4842001#

Combine that with a PicoPSU (takes nearly zero space), and an external 12VDC brick (or siphon from the LCD's brick) and we're good to go with some software.

Cheers

I saw that as well this morning, it does look good, but I wish it also had DVI, Wifi (or at least mini PCI) and no fan.

That one will also need a fan. Any photo frame I make will have to be completely silent, which means no fans. Which means a low power VIA board or an even lower powered ARM board.

Via unichrome graphics?
Not the best ISTR.

http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xorg/2007-September/028578.html

If you're going with that much power then you want wizzy 3D graphics!!

So either an onboard AMD/ATI chipset (and hope they were honest about 3D) or didn't Intel release a middle-of-the-road onboard gpu with OS drivers?

Like the PSU
Like the 100+ pricing more!

I do think that totally fanless is very important. I was thinking about heatpipes and the like.

On the screen side, I'm interested in seeing if we can pull together information about reusing LCD screens, but also buying a 19" monitor and using a vesa wall mount...

On another tangent, if this is going to work (for me) it needs to be pretty. So I'm working on splashy too.