Eeepc Picture Frame

eeepc_frame

We’ve all seen a million digital picture frames. Usually, people use an old outdated laptop or something. [Quinten] just sent in this one he made using an Eeepc 701. Being the first one available, the smallest both in terms of screen size and storage, they are available pretty cheap. There’s nothing amazingly groundbreaking here, just yanking all the parts out of the Eeepc and mounting them, nicely, in a wooden frame. [Quinten] did a great job getting everything in, with the least amount of space wasted. It strikes us that He has made a super cheap tablet conversion, he’s only missing the touch screen. We’ve seen Eeepc tablet conversions, but they seemed to have much more difficult to construct cases.

24 thoughts on “Eeepc Picture Frame

  1. Oh /please/… the low-end digital picture frames are nearly worse than useless.

    With something like the above, you can use it as a wall-mounted tablet, play music or video on it.. there are all sorts of options.

    Just because it’s /cheaper/ to go with a commercial product, doesn’t mean it’s always /better/.

  2. The quality of most digital picture frames is deplorable, and there’s nothing else you can do with them.

    I would have gone with an Chumby + larger panel, but this is still a hack.

    Quit hatin’

  3. looking at the pictures, there appears to be lots of sheet metal inside of the pc. It’s not evident that this shielding made it into the hacked picture frame.

    consider, the manufacturers of consumer grade electronics are *very* cost conscious. This means that metal shields and panels are in the product for a reason.

    perhaps this project is better titled: “combination eepc picture frame and broadband rf jammer”

  4. I have converted a couple of 800×600 Dell laptops to digital photo frames. There are some advantages to this approach over buying a new digital photo frame.

    – recycles an obsolete but still functional laptop
    – bigger image than photo frames
    – networkable (and uses old WiFi PCMCIA cards!)
    – customizable – add clock, captions, control transitions

  5. Is there any website that has a compilation of good software to use for a pc picture frame? I am looking for something like a clock, full screen weather, good media player (large buttons, album art, etc.) maybe a custom UI.

  6. @m0535
    Any of the “widgets” type things should give you what most of what you want;
    Yahoo! Widgets (for Windows)
    Google Desktop (for Windows)
    Konfabulator (for UN*X + XWindows)
    Vista (might be a bit heavy) has them built in.

    It’s fairly easy to write new or modify widgets if there’s not one that does exactly what you need.

  7. I was thinking about doing something like this. What appealed to me was the networking side of it. You could create a shared folder on the Eee PC and just connect another laptop to it, send photos (wirelessly), and it would show them on screen. Removes the need for a memory card all together!

    Also, if it were me, I would have added touch screen capability, seeing as the kits for this model are going so cheap on eBay.

  8. barry99705:

    Perhaps you should take another look at

    http://awooga.nl/g/image/35403-2/DSC01757.JPG

    I see shielding *all over* the place! In addition to a large sheet metal shield at the lower right of the photo, it is evident that that the interior of the entire housing either contains a metal liner, or is coated with conductive material of some kind. (mid and upper-left of photo.)

    why do *you* think the manufacturers put that in there? I stand by my original comments.

    barry99705 said:

    >There’s actually very little sheet metal in an
    >eeepc. Mostly just the bottom of the keyboard.

  9. Uh yeah, that whole supercritical sheet metal issue aside (?) (that case ain’t no farady cage kids)

    this does seem like overkill unless you stretch the meaning of the term “digital photo frame” or severely under-use the hardware.

    It’s far better than the thing not being used at all I’ll agree.
    (personally i would have gone robot, but that’s me)

  10. That’s no ordinary sheet metal. Its aluminum. Aluminum doesn’t hold heat very well, so i’m guessing its main use is to not pass the heat to your lap, of which past years have complained so frequently of killing sperm, eggs, etc.
    the damn eee is cheap plastic. It would probably melt if not for that flimsy aluminum.

  11. >>Oh /please/… the low-end digital picture frames are nearly worse than useless.

    Thay DO display pictures… My loo too is next to useless, except for taking a dump.

    Doing 1 thing well is quite a good idea even after 15 year of “multitasking” brainwashing.

    And yes, at least in developped countries, digital picture frames have nice screens.

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