Comments on: Putting a digital picture frame to work

By: bill

bill — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 00:58:59 +0000

I spotted this…. http://www.hackthejoggler.com …could be promising as the joggler lacks load of cool options like a browser!!
think I’ll keep an eye out or get good real quick and earn the 1000pounds they are offering!!!

By: May Liitle

May Liitle — Thu, 14 May 2009 09:42:51 +0000

That’s awesome!!! I look for digital frames.And how to choose it.I saw many websites about this but your websites is the best for me.I love this site.Thank you

By: mr x

mr x — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 12:59:50 +0000

related:
O2 Unveils Joggler Electronic Post-It Device
http://www.itproportal.com/portal/news/article/2009/3/5/o2-unveils-joggler-electronic-post-it-device/

By: Pierre Pronchery

Pierre Pronchery — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 14:30:27 +0000

Ah right, our english-friendly web page is there:
http://bearstech.com/english

and you can use our hackable-devices mailing-list to discuss this:
http://list.bearstech.com/mailman/listinfo/hackable-devices

Happy hacking :)

By: Pierre Pronchery

Pierre Pronchery — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 14:22:35 +0000

Just a word about hackable picture frames. We at Bearstech (small French Open Source services company) are reselling the Openmoko Freerunner for a while now. We are considering designing and reselling a picture frame on the same model. The specifications would be:
- 400 Mhz ARM (Samsung 2440) with 32MB RAM
- 128MB internal flash storage, SD/MMC/MS memory cards
- 8″ 800×600 LCD (no touchscreen)
It would be at least $140, for a few thousand orders.

This would therefore be hackable in the sense that:
- casing CAD files would be public
- access to the bootloader
- Linux support off the shelf

We would like to know if you think this would be interesting for you, to have a better idea on the numbers and pricing. We want to enable people to do such hacks with minimum effort, and eventually evolve our software distribution (hackable:1) to seemlessly interface with the picture frame: the actual touchscreen could be on our Openmoko for instance :)

By: jeff

jeff — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 04:57:57 +0000

anyway too run linux on it and use it as a netbook?

By: Hugh Bothwell

Hugh Bothwell — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 00:37:45 +0000

Why use cron? Wouldn’t it be easier to immediately push a new image whenever a change occurs?

By: Stu

Stu — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 21:13:58 +0000

Yeah its a real shame that WiFi digital pic frames are still a bit prohibitively expensive (at least in the UK it seems) as I’d love to do something like this. I’d hate to have to pay >£100 for only an electronic noticeboard. I only have an SD card based dpf at the mo, only cost me £40 from a supermarket tho!
In the absence of the ability to hack these devices wide open to turn them general purpose, this hack is a great start. Its a shame the large proliferation of different manufacturers builds means hacking only one of them open has little impact on the whole.
It seems still that very old second hand laptops off ebay are the way to go for something like this, the screens are typically larger too, still feels a little wasteful tho on energy and utilisation of it all.
Gr8 work!

By: brlewis

brlewis — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 18:36:36 +0000

mattyb, what model is it? Some Kodak frames will pull from any Media RSS URL.

andieh: You’re right about power consumption. The model shown here (Samsung SPF-83V) drew only 9 watts when I was testing it. Full review here: http://ourdoings.com/2008-03-01

By: cde

cde — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 17:46:21 +0000

The Eye-Fi won’t work. It’s upload only. It won’t download files.

By: DJ_Q

DJ_Q — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 17:41:38 +0000

mattyb you could sniff the network to see the address that the picture frame access for its images and then use a dns spoof to your own server.

I second fyrebug’s eye-fi comments.

By: MattyB

MattyB — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 16:32:54 +0000

I think I’ll look into this – I bought a “Wifi enabled” Kodak frame, unfortunately it will only download pictures over Wifi from a proprietary app or Kodak’s own site. I was hoping for it to just appear as a remote device on the LAN, or alternatively grab images from a network share. Anyone got any pointers?

By: fyrebug

fyrebug — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 14:52:10 +0000

I wonder if the same could be done with a cheapo digi frame and an eye-fi wifi sd card. ????

no idea how the eye-fi’s work…

By: blizzzarddemon

blizzzarddemon — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 13:50:54 +0000

Interesting, could have many uses via a touchscreen.

By: andieh

andieh — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 11:44:42 +0000

rb:
the picture frame cost about 100€, so i think thats not more expansive than a complete old laptop. and dont forget power consumption, too…