Homemade Digital Picture Frames?

kato writes: "I've been searching for months for the right parts to make a digital picture frame for my wall. I'm not trying to mount an entire PC in a frame, so I think an old laptop would be overkill. I've heard about devices such as the Audrey made by 3COM, the AOL Touchpad made by Gateway, the Cieva picture frame, and a few others, but each has its faults. Some are impossible to find, some require a service, and some aren't yet "hacked." I'd like the price to be cheap (under $100), the picture to be about 10" diagonally, and to be able to connect to the device (modem or network). Now that the MIT flea market is over, I'm stuck trying to find the parts online. I'm leaning towards the AOL Touchpad, which runs Mobile Linux, but no one has posted any attempts on how to get rid of AOL. Anyone have any ideas or success stories?" An earlier question pointed out this site, but I suppose buying one would take all the fun out of it. You also need to watch out for "subscription to our service required" frames...

the product linked ins't helpful --

the product linked ins't helpful -- it costs $500 when our target is under $100. story research, la la la.

oh but it has been

the aol/gateway deal has been hacked
and you can find instructions in the forums on linux-hacker.com

more specificaly

http://www.linux-hacker.net/cgi-bin/UltraBoard/U lt raBoard.pl?Action=ShowBoard&Board=aolgw&Idle=&Sort =&Order=&Session=

Buy a Color printer.

I never understood the draw for digital picture frames. When they're GIVING away photo quality printers with computer purchases and a full resolution printout amortises to about $2 a page, the only thing that DPF gives you is a wipe to another picture...and a power reuirement.

Buy a $60 dollar printer, and when the cartridges dry up, pitch it. You're out less money, and the pictures work everywhere but in the dark. (Okay, TWO benefits to a digital picture frame.)

Pick the right paper, and the photos will last a heckuva lot longer than the DPF will.

Re:Buy a Color printer.

Buy a $60 dollar printer, and when the cartridges dry up, pitch it. You're out less money, and the pictures work everywhere but in the dark. (Okay, TWO benefits to a digital picture frame.)

Well, there's a few problems with that approach. Number one, ink cartidges ain't cheap (and could, after a while, add up to more than the cost of a device). Second, you lose the ability to cycle through pictures on the fly.

I may just be a wierdo for thinking so, but a big advantage of the digital device would be the ability to incorporate it into some "instant room theming" system. Perhaps coding dynamic theming apps has just gone to my head, but I think it'd be cool.

Besides, we already know how to click "File -> Print -> Ok", but the fun is in the hackery of something to suit our own purposes. I could buy pre-built Lego models too, but that wouldn't be very nifty.

Re:Buy a Color printer.

You make a good point there. The price/performance ration isn't terribly good at the moment for this sort of thing in general.

The Gyricon system looks extremely cool! Of course, I'd want the "paper" to be re-writable more than a few thousand times (to allow for fun stuff like streaming MPEG movies, so I wouldn't burn out my display in a few seconds ;) ). Xerox has a history of backing up their "promises" with proof, so I'll eagerly wait in antici... PAtion (sorry, gratuitous movie reference).

Now, there is always the possibility of checking around with local hospital systems for "old hardware" that they're tossing out. A couple of years ago, I managed to secure two 21" monitors and a couple of decent PCs from a hospital that had decided the hardware was "obsolete". True, they really ought to have been giving the stuff away to charity of educational insititutions, but they were literally thowing the monitors in the dumpster. Now, I just need to carve up my wall with a saw...

Re:Buy a Color printer.

Second, you lose the ability to cycle through pictures on the fly.

Well, you could put the pictures in page protectors, and then assemble a set in a three ring binder. Tape the binder to the wall, put all the pages at the top, and you'll cycle through the pictures. Adjusting the friction with some tape allows you to adjust the cycle speed. Benefits;

1. No external electrical power requirements
2. Puting pictures back to back in the page protectors allows 2 pics to be viewed at once.
3. When a picture of your ex scrolls throw that you forgot to pull, you can throw a dart at it w/o worrying about breaking an expensive LCD screen.

Re:Buy a Color printer.

Hey,

I may just be a wierdo for thinking so, but a big advantage of the digital device would be the ability to incorporate it into some "instant room theming" system.

Yeah. You could have a touchscreen inside your front door, so if you bring a girl home, all your porn posters are replaced by tastful modern art. That'd be useful.

Well, it would be useful if any /.ers ever had girls visiting thier homes.

On a serious note, It'd be cool if you could hack your picture frames to show streaming media (some use Linux and ethernet, no?) then you could have a TV input card on a computer, and if you went to the kitchen to get a snack, you wouldn't have to miss the program.

Michael

How about ....

putting a second video card in your PC and connecting an old monitor (or a new LCD monitor for that matter) to it?

Sure not quite what you were after, but you would get a large picture at a relatively low cost.

How about an I-Opener?

I just finished hacking my I-Opener that I bought on ebay (for 50 dollars) and I think it would be pretty plausible. Actually, I was thinking of surrounding the border with a frame and putting it up on the wall like a picture frame.

What would be really cool...

This doesn't answer the question at all, but what would be really cool is some kind of digital display that, once the display is set, doesn't require any power. You could plug it in to your computer, download a picture, then unplug it and put it on your desk, wall, whatever. I'd pay $100 for that!

Is there any such technology out there that does this -- some kind of persistent, no- or low-power display?

Yeah, for all you wise-akers out there, I know you can do the same thing with paper and a printer, but paper ceased to be cool about 2000 years ago.

Simple suggestion

I'll admit upfront i can't come up with any solution that be less than $100. I'm interested if anybody can though.

My suggesttion:

Small form factor PC : the SV24 Cube or something like that.
Wall Mounted LCD display : for the "digital picture frame" .
Run whatever OS you want. (My preference is some distribution of Linux).
Write some custom software that'll do whatever you want to make it act like a picture frame, ie. scan the cdrom whenver a cd is inserted, get all image files on the cdrom and display it on the LCD as a screenshow.
Speakers of your choice : the box can double as a Ogg Vorbis / Mp3 player in the room.
Wireless / Wired Ethernet : Pull new pictures directly from your home lan, the minute you load whatever new pictures you've taken on your digital cam onto your PC that you use to manipulate your photos on.

Think real hard now.

Ok, when you buy these cheap LCD-devices. You are getting crappy DSTN displays, which you can't even view unless you are directly in front of them. Doesnt sound like a very good picture frame to me, so if you want a quality picture frame i think you are going to have to buy an active matrix display for it(ones below 15" can be had for under $150.) A DSTN on something you want people to look at around the room should at least be visible to them from more than 1 angle. Otherwise you are just a "stupid person with too much money and all these novelty toys that don't actually do anything". Just my opinion...

This may be going overboard

but what about some system where you pipe the image itself (not a digital representation thereof) directly over fiber optic cable to be rear projected onto a surface of your choosing?

It seems to me this device would consist of a unit to first convert the signal from any generic PC video card to its "analog" image form, then boost the image amplification, and send it down the cable. The receiving unit would take the image coming in off the cable, perform any desired magnification or whatever, and project it onto a glass surface.

I am not an optics expert AT ALL. It just seems like this might have some potential for looking into.

Wallpaper

I have long been waiting for the day when I can have literally wall-to-wall lcd (or whatever flat display is in at the time).

I think texture-mapping your walls would be a lot cooler than wallpapering them- and less messy too! How long would it be before there was a "wood-chip" module where you could scratch the chips off like people annoyingly do after you've painted it?

Also I could mince around the room all day dragging my posters to different locations...

Imagine! No more agonizing in the shop over which clock, calander etc to buy- just run the applet of your choice!

Then there would be the /. interactive poster (if I could afford the million dollar subscription for it... ("Dude! Your poster's expired!")).

Actually I think makers of posters, art prints etc. would start getting aggressive when they found the "mp3" effect was hitting them.

Anyway, thanks for listening to my silly girlish fantasy, and now you can all reply with your lame jokes about "Windows for walls" (Any colour you like as long as it's blue....) etc.

graspee

Use an old PC

You could find an old PC somewhere with a color wideo card and hook it up to a small flat-panel monitor. That way you could ssh/scp in from outside to upload new pictures and change the current one. I don't know where you'd get a 10" plat-panel monitor though...

Stuck with a laptop

For that kind of money you can't even buy a raw LCD panel, probably not even used. Your best bet is to buy an old laptop. The old NEC versa laptops had reversible screens so you could flip the screen around and face it outwards making it fairly trivial to disguise the keyboard. You are really going to have a hard time beating an old laptop for price/performance. The only other thing I can think of in your price range would be a second video card and a small color TV or used RGB monitor and either one of those is going to be a challenge to disguise (if you are after that 'picture frame' look). The color TV is easier as you can use standard coax cable and off the shelf amplifiers for long cable runs. I suppose you could also use one of those wireless video devices but the quality on those things pretty much sucks, although at smaller screen sizes it may be ok.

I have my Audrey working as a picture frame right now and its pretty good, I just have to figure out how to stop the thing from timeing out and shutting itself off!

Get A Used 486 Laptop From Surplus PC/Thrift Store

Sometimes you can get those as cheap as $20 if you find one at a thrift store/surplus PC store... Upon analysis of my existing laptop (when I was fixing the display), it wouldbe fairly simply to remove the panel completely, replace the connector (which is basically a bundle of wires in shrinkwrap) with slightly longer cabling, and flip the display over so it faces away from the laptop when closed, add a mounting point on the back for hanging, and you've got a digital picture frame for less than $30 total... Install Windows 3.11 or Linux and you're good to go...

the price point is the display

computers are basically free now, so the price
is determined by the display. A CRT is ugly
as hell, in my opinion, so you want an LCD. An
obsolete laptop may still have a perfectly acceptable display (You wanted 10"). Look on ebay for
laptops with missing CDROM or cracked case or
other cosmetic problems. Then open it up, mount the display, and maybe fold the keyboard underneath. Wireless 802.11 card will make it a
great web-ified picture frame.

I use an old 486 75 Mhz thinkpad with 16 mB of RAM, hooked to
a new 15" flat panel I bought explicitly as a picture frame. The advantage is that it contacts a web server in my house, which selects pictures and lets my friends upload new photos or send them as attachments by email, and they are displayed in our living room.

The price of my system was $0 for the old laptop, and $500 for the beautiful display. But LCD panels
are coming down in price. I didn't use the display on the laptop because its only 640x480, and
doesn't have enough colors.

LCD prices ?

it seems a bit of a pipe dream because the prices of LCD's seem quite high for you
(although for a full monitor they ARE LOW buy now is my advice)

I know that 1024x768 is about £300 (~$765 acording to pricewatch)

BUT what about differant form factor how much do these cost and how about getting it from friendly electronics store (just bare screen no enclosure ) I dont know

anyone have any clue ?

regards

john jones

Quick and Easy?

Hmm... Hack a 99$ I-opener. Connect it as an ftp server, and have it ftp to a directory used by one of those ever popular picture-displaying screen savers. Mount the moniter on the wall, mount the box in a closet or with the rest fo the servers in your house, problem solved. (for I-opener info, visit linux-hacker.org)

If you get tired of cutting holes in the wall (and who doesn't?) there is a less geeky solution. Just buy one. Kensington has out a 640x480 7" solution that is in the 150 range. The USB connection won't let you remotely manage your photograph collection from a motel in kenya, but this will actually work and with minimal effort.

http://shop.store.yahoo.com/cfarr/kendigphotal1. ht ml (too lazy to html at this time of morning)

Hacking a laptop's TFT Screen

This isn't 100% relevant to making a photo frame, but I also don't think it warrants an entire thread of its own. So here's a supplementary question from me: Has anyone successfully hacked a laptop's TFT screen for use with other devices?

Id est, have you successfully 'ripped' the screen from the laptop and interfaced it with stuff like an ordinary VGA, something that outputs video, pictures, whatever?

I'm trying to find more information on that. I have a couple of old laptops that can barely run X, and since I'm integrating a PC into my car, I thought it'd be nice to rip the TFT off of one and use it for in-car output. In the past, I've replaced some cabling connecting the laptop's on-board VGA card to the TFT screen and the entire system looked very weird to me. But I'm assuming it can be done, if the pinouts can be tracked down. Or I could be way off track :)

If anybody with more experience on this could point me to the right direction, I'd appreciate it.

Cheap LCD sources

eio [eio.com] has a few alternatives [eio.com] towards the bottom of the page (starting with the 5L-U4E). They range from $99 to $350 in with sizes 5", 6", and 12" available. Most of these accept an NTSC signal, so you could interface one with a cheap PC fairly easily. Unfortunately, all the color displays appear to be sold out right now. With a little bit of digging, you might be able to find another supplier of the same or similar products, or they might get more in stock sometime.

Also, Lik-sang [lik-sang.com] has both a 5" [lik-sang.com] and 7" [lik-sang.com] LCD display for $99 and $199 respectively. The 5" is a PS One display that accepts NTSC/PAL, and the 7" is a more standard NTSC/PAL display. The latter has additional features like an screen orientation flip (so you can mount it however you like), speakers, and a battery slot. This would probably be my choice for this type of project.

Don't disregard the 3Com Audrey, however. You wouldn't even have to hack the thing to get it running as a picture frame. Just plug it into your network and use the browser to display the images from another server that is doing all the work. The browser has a full screen mode that is pretty well suited for this. I should know because one of mine was displaying a pr0n slideshow for a while :-). With a little bit of php/perl/asp/etc programming, you could make a very flexible (with respect to image size, delay between images, etc) solution that could behave exactly how you want.

LCD sources?

Is there a good source out there for bare LCDs in small quantities? I've been able to find some at earthlcd.com [earthlcd.com],
but in general it doesn't seem like the kind of thing you can find at your local Radio Shack. Ten inch TFT displays there run around $300 minimum, so I don't see bringing the whole project in under $100 as practical, unless you're planning to go directly to the manufacturers and order thousands of units.

it would be easier to buy one

http://www.digi-frame.com/ has great, moderately priced, subscription free frames of many sizes. I wrote the developer and he sent me his protocol specification [there's open for you]. also, i think they take either CF or smartmedia. and they look nice.

Audrey

1.) Buy Audrey
2.) Open browser on audrey and point it to cgi-script on a box on network
3.) Make Browser full screen
4.) Have cgi script display an image, wait a few seconds and reload.

Get an Audrey...

3Com's Audrey is about $80 from http://tigerdirect.com and, from what I've heard, are easily hacked. You can even get a ethernet adapter so that you could even send the pictures through your network.

old Laptop LCD's

Would it be possible to hook up a Laptop LCD screen to a regular video card. I know you probably need some controller card or one of those 200 dollar ISA video cards that support it. anyways is there a easy and cheap way to do that. I have a few laptop lcd screens around here and I would like to get some use out of them. especially i I can use them with my GEFORCE 2.

OLED Display

hey remember when the OLED Display technology just came out and everyone was wanting to buy like 6 foor screens for dirt cheap. will that still happen when they come out sometime next year. will they still be dirt cheap?

Kensington sale

Kensington has US$79 for 5.7" diagonal screen; 320 X 240 resolution [buykensington.com] and US$149 for 7.4" diagonal screen, 640 X 480 resolution [buykensington.com].
It says they're out of stock though, so I don't know if this deal is still available.

Planar PC

Check around for some of the older Planar PC's. You used to be able to find the 486 with integrated LCD $100-$200, and they make a wallmount specifically for it.

They had an ISA slot and PCMCIA slot, so you could add an 802.11 adapter to stream data to it. They didn't have the greatest screen, but it might be ok.

http://www.planar.com/ [planar.com]

Cheap Ceiva

Buy a Ceiva for $99 after rebate [amazon.com] and hack it or not.

I-Opener, personal experience

GET AN I-OPENER. I ordered one after reading some slashdot about it, and it was about $140 + $80 for the hard drive, other mods. Right now their like $85 with HDD on e-bay. An i-opener is a full-fledged computer (internet device) minus HDD. Like, 32m ram, 233mhz, 12" screen, all in one. with a stand. but you could remove the stand and screw it into the wall if you want. Definitely the I-Opener is your best choice. I've got one, but it's not a frame yet. You might also try the Ricoh 1200S, or whatever, that's a 10.4" touchscreen (i got one of those too).
Good luck,
-Rob

Similar Idea

A couple of weeks ago, I had an idea similar to this. What I wanted was a device that had a 7" display that could act like a portable digital photo album.

My girlfriend likes to take pictures. She's not keen on getting a digital camera because she doesn't want to have to look at the pictures with a computer (let's put the printer conversation aside).

I figured that if she had a device that she could take with her, slide in a disc with the actual pictures on it, then she can browse the pictures away from her computer. So the theory is that she'd use her computer to compile albums on some form of disc (or something similar). These digital albums could then be taken and viewed using a portable device designed to input one of these discs, and display the photos on a 7" screen.

These digital frames are 1/2 way there.

Anyone know where I can get an Audrey now?

Other than eBay, I'm having trouble finding the Audrey. TigerDirect doesn't seem to have it on their site anymore. Anyone have any suggestions?

ePods Internet Appliance

You may want to check out an ePods Internet Appliance [geocities.com]. The company went out of business, and their product is highly hackable. Coincidence?

It is slow by today's computing standards but should serve as a digital picture frame just fine. You can put a 10Mb/s wireless card in it to pull the pictures off a network server or you can use a CompactFlash card. The CompactFlash card may be necessary because the ePods comes with little memory and runs at 256 colors by default. One of the hacks is to get it using 16-bit color, but it takes up most of the ePods' internal memory. New programs may need to be stored on the CompactFlash card.

Here's the catch: It runs Windows CE, and to hack it, you need another Windows box to transfer the hacked files to it. I took mine to work and hacked it there. I didn't want to attempt getting Linux ported to it.

It seems like there are a lot of downsides to using the ePods, and to overcome those downsides you have to spend some extra money beyond the cost of the ePods itself. I'm just trying to spread some info here. I'm going to give all this a shot, since I already have an ePods. :P

Sony Cyberframe

This is one of Sony's more "lifestyle concept" products (ie very expensive, although i thought it might be of interest.

The cyberframe [salon.com] (link to Salon as i couldn't find it on the sony site) is a digital picture frame which can display pictures from a memory stick. The purpose was that you could take a picture with your memory stick camera and stick the pictures into the frame immediately.

The downside is that is costs $900. A bit out of reach for practically everybody, but it apparently [video-direct.com] can do MPEGs and slide shows.

I just hope you can get a cheap laptop system (from the other comments) which you can hook up to a wall that actually looks as aesthetically pleasing as this, as there's no point in having a beautiful picture if there are wires streaking everywhere.

Been there, Done that

For a course at my college [virginia.edu] a few years ago, a group of us decided to build a digital picture frame. We wanted to build something similar to what you are describing. I hope my experience can help.

We built it from scratch -- no PC or handheld -- since we wanted it to be cheap, small, and portable. As the processor, we used a BasicX [basicx.com] microcontroller. You program it in a language similar to BASIC -- very easy to pick up -- and it stores the code in EEPROM so that you can make changes at will. It also has a serial port (use a null-modem cable -- this is how you put the code on it) so you can use that for input/output when it is running independently to add/remove pictures, etc. The BasicX controller isn't the most stable thing in the world (nor the fastest) -- but it's great for quick + dirty development.

We used a cheap, nondescript, color 6" LCD, but had major problems trying to get it to sync correctly. The documentation was too scarce -- make sure you get lots of current docs on your LCD of choice. Perhaps the speed limitations of the BasicX controller had something to do with it (I think the minimum instruction execution time is around 1 us -- more for serial port accessing).

For storage, we tried to get a flash memory reader/writer, since the BasicX EEPROM was not sufficient. We wanted it to have lots of static memory that was also portable. (Perhaps not the greatest idea.) We couldn't find anything that was good for development purposes -- just end-user PC-compatible reader/writers. I recommend trying to find cheap, slow computer memory. This is possibly the most difficult part of the supplies -- finding static memory at a decent price.

Pricing was as follows:
BasicX Development Station: $140
Used, generic, unknown color LCD: $300
Flash memory reader/writer: $80
32MB Flash card: $50 (it was a few years ago)
Total: around $400

We also wanted to use a USB controller for reading/writing to memory -- bad idea. It cost us a lot of time and money.

Hope this helps,
Josh

Things to consider

First, I'd want a high resolution to view the photos that I've scanned in. Some of these hit 1600x1280 quite easily. It need not be in pixels, but I'd want to have the density like IBM's high-end panels
Thin. I would want this to be no thicker than a regular picture in a frame.
Connections should either be wireless networking with batteries, or physical connections in the rear coming up though the wall.
Internal HD to store images. Some old IBM laptop.
Integration into a smart house network - so it is possible to change from 'Dogs Playing Poker' to 'Water Lilies' when a date shows up. Also support for standard video signals (TV) would be nice.

Humm... Too bad the bulbs in the LCD projectors don't last more than 200 hours, otherwise I'd suggest using one of those.

One approach

A couple of years ago, I upgraded my PowerBook, and had the old machine spare. It's a PowerBook 5300c - a decent CPU and TFT display, but rather low-end for development...

So I took it out of its case, placed the motherboard on the back of the LCD, bought a cheap ($10) picture frame with a custom-cut border and put them together.

At the time my house had Ethernet in the walls, so I punched a hole in the wall, and put the machine on my network. Power and net were hidden, and the machine worked great. I wrote a quick app that displayed images from my collection. A wonderful way to show digital photographs you've taken.

Total cost was about $30 - I had no other use for the 5300. You could pick up a cheap laptop on eBay for $100-$200 if you don't have a spare. Bear in mind that displaying JPEGs is a very low-end task. All you really need is a decent TFT display and a network connection. Local hard disc is nice but not required.

Great fun to do, too.

I still have this working in my new house, but it now has an Airport card so I only need to wire in the power supply. This makes it easier to move it around and means I don't have to run Ethernet everywhere.

LCD sources

I was able to pick up a crapload of LCD screens for 5 bucks a piece at a surplus store, mostly 12.1 and 14 inch displays.. The sheet that came from the manufacturer said they were bad, but I looked at the sheet and most said stuff like "one bad pixel" or "contrast not to standard" So I rummaged through them and bought all the ones I could. so I have 65 12.1 displays and about 5 14 inch displays, plus a handful of 10 inch ones sitting in my room!! I bought them with my rent check and now I need to know if they work. But to test them, I need a video card that costed more than the display.. So If anyone has anywhere they know of to get a cheap video card to test these things with, I would be willing to part with them..

Webplayer..

I'm suprised no one has mentioned the webplayer yet.. I picked up a couple in a co-op buy last winter and just now got around to hacking it (hows that for procrastination?) - You can pick them up at ubid or ebay for around $100 - There's a great webplayer hacking forum here [linux-hacker.net] and it's easy to hook up to a USB ethernet connection..

Similiar Idea

I've been thinking about the possibility of a having a cool looking computer pad like those ones on Enterprise, and I'm looking for a small display a bit bigger than your hand. And can you construct your own touch screen system for an LCD display? To get the best brightness I would probably need OLED.

Information on OLED Displays

http://www.kodak.com/country/US/en/corp/researchDe velopment/productFeatures/oled.shtml

iFrame

Apple needs to make a digital picture frame. They've gone completley LCD now (aside from the iMac), and everyone knows they are the king of product design. Just imagine a nice frame that can hang on your wall either in landscape or portrait mode (with intelligence), that uses an AirPort [apple.com] to display pictures off of your home LAN or its internal memory (8MB should be sufficient) (in case the fileserver goes down).

Try a thinkpad 560.

Thinkpad 560 = 16-bit TFT 800x600 color ultra-thin machine with an early Pentium and up to 40MB RAM using standard EDO SODIMMs.

Easy... Get ahold of one, disconnect the hinges, flip, glue, encase the whole thing in a thin wooden box, get some solid state storage on the order of 128MB or so for the PCMCIA slot, set the BIOS to boot from it, cheap NE2k for the other PCMCIA slot, install minimal Linux+X+ftp server and a script to just cycle all of the images in the incoming ftp directory.

Plug into network and power and hang on wall. 12.1" digital picture frame, total cost $100 or so, provided you get a good deal on the 560. I got mine for $150 but that was about a year ago now so depreciation is where I get the $100 figure... Beware that the backlights can fail from being on forever and ever and they're a pain to replace [tip -- if one blows on you, don't bother, just shop e-bay for a whole new 12.1" panel with backlight included, they're fairly cheap that way].

Good luck.

The Audrey's the Thing

I have an Audrey that I picked up off EBay for $80. With the hacks from the Audrey Hacking [audreyhacking.com] site, it has been updated to the latest firmware. Using the pictureframe module from Misterhouse [sourceforge.net] I not only have X10 control of my house accessible from the Audrey, but also as a digital pictureframe when idle. The Audrey also has a high Spouse Acceptibility Factor and looks great when you put three or four around the house. Get the additional supported 3Com 3C19250 USB Ethernet adaptor if you have broadband and it works great as an instant-on fast internet appliance.

View Angle Problem.

Aren't we forgeting something here?

LCD's realy suck when you are not standing right
in front of them. this means whatever you hang on the wall will look realy bad from all other angles.

- Ron.

re: Homemade Digital Picture Frames?

Here's a suggestion: purchase a portable game screen (like the one you can buy for the PSOne [kanection.co.uk]), and attach one of these digital slide presenters (here [avermedia.com]). I haven't looked closely at either unit, but someone with a bit of technical knowhow should be able to get these two talking to each other. And the benefit is when you want to change the images, just change the media card.

how's this...

how about an audrey or iOpener connected to your LAN with a browser window open and the browser showing a page (served from another box on the LAN) who's only tags are (meta refresh) and (img src)? that way the frame does nothing but show the pics, and the pics themselves are all stored safely on another machine which is easy to administer. also makes it easy to add more framse around the house that all pull from the same pool of pics. or, the others could just as easily pull from a different set.

Re:stay away from 3com audrey

I disagree.. it's $89 for christs sakes, some of your guys are really cheap, the screen is perfectly adequate for a home controler and picture frame especially when you apply the hack to enable increased colour depth [3rdmoon.com].

It's certainly not worth $499, but $89 is (was) a good price... some sites were asking $150 for the surplus audrey LCD's.

Re:stay away from 3com audrey

I do not agree with you (I own an audrey) and like a growing and active community we think this gizmo can have a second live for hobbyist... but yes, +400 USD was too expensive (I bought mine from tiger direct at 89 plus custom as I live in Europe) and if I had the chance I would love to buy 3 or 4 more but they do not sale them anymore...

Re:This might help

I seem to remember that about the time that the LTE Elite came out, there was another laptop that allowed the LCD screen to the folded back over the keyboard base. I don't remember the name, but it might eliminate have to remount all the parts.