Build Your Own LCD Picture Frame

mbrain writes "PopSci is running a really good how-to story that shows how to build your own LCD picture frame. Since you are building it yourself, you can make it any size you like, using an off-the-shelf LCD monitor as the display. The frame as described uses a cheap motherboard, power supply and HD and runs Linux. It can hold thousands of photos. A little pricey, but still a cool project (especially if you have some of the parts laying around)."

Someday

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope to surround myself with LCD walls and change my room based on my mood.

Coolness factor

[barenaked]

I guess the reason for doing this would ahve to be the coolness factor of it and rolling it yourself. But when you realize it is going to cost you $500+ for the "coolness factor" and you see there are cheaper already built alternatives out there for less than half the cost why not buy a prebuilt one? None of your family cares what your picture frame runs on or your picture frames uptime FYI

Any size?

[Vo0k]

you can make it any size you like, using an off-the-shelf LCD monitor as the display.
So, I want the display to be, say, 10" diagonal, with frame 11", yeah, I go and buy such a display (where?) or get a ready one and cut it to the right dimensions?

You are pretty much stuck with the display size and you can only obscure it or extend the frame. You are stuck with factory display sizes.

sweet monkey jesus

[OwlofCreamCheese]

my lord this is a retarded plan. I see absolutely zero advantage in doing it this way, what overkill! I'd be impressed if it ran off a chip or something senseable, but this is just way too much work. you can get jpg decoders on a chip, I'd be impressed if you made this out of a digital camera (just switch the LCD to a bigger one). but this is just "buy a computer, glue it to the wall"

Re:A solution in search of a problem?

[Cthefuture]

Uh, except that it changes, moves, or could even be interactive given some sort of input/stimulus.

Yawn - Done way back.

[Graemee]

Check these links for a Duo (Laptop) mod to a picture frame. I remember this site as the first I saw. I have an old 486 and a 64MB compaq flash just waiting for a conversion.

http://www.applefritter.com/hacks/duodigitalfram e
http://www.applefritter.com/node/view/728

Duo Digital Frame by James Roos

Missing the point

[SuperBanana]

Creating an entire PC just to show a picture?

I agree, but you're missing most of the point- it's not the hardware, it's the concept; low-tech is best.

• framing a picture means it was good enough to warrant said treatment. The whole point of putting up a picture frame is lost if all you show are crap photos of your dog or whatnot. Further, if I have a great photo, I want it to always be there, or at least be instantly accessible. No easy way to do that here...
• the LCD panel won't last very long being on all day, every day; the backlights are rated for a few thousand hours tops.
• they're horrible for viewing at anything other than dead-on; gamma and contrast change drastically from side to side or above/below
• they need a power cord, which is fugly
• they have vastly inferior resolution; high-resolution LCD panels aren't available anywhere except in laptops. A standard print from even, say, Walmart's digital photo lab machine...is at least 300dpi, more like 600dpi.
• Archival photo paper, with UV-blocking glass, mounted with acid-free materials, will last decades. This toy will last about 2-3 years if it's lucky. Maybe 5.
• at the temperatures involved (the mini-itx site lists a figure around 44C) none of the components will last very long. Hard drives especially don't like heat...

$500 is waaaay too much..

[Awptimus Prime]

This is probably the worst article I've seen posted on making digital picture frames. I apologize if that hurts anyone's feelings, but a lot more thinking could have gone into the design and parts.

For starters, why not go to the flea market or ebay and pick up an ancient laptop? This gives you a cpu, motherboard, hard drive, network interface, and a display. I was able to find old, functional laptops for under $150 [ebay.com] on ebay.

I would pull the motherboard and mount it against the back of the display, then order a premium, custom built frame from a picture frame shop for ~$25-$100. You could be cheap and build your own, but $100 should get something nice and elegant. Another option would be to just pick up a pre-built frame and put in an insert cut to your spec.

For people not up to the skill level of configuring Linux, they could simply boot to Windows and set their SHELL variable to a screen saver's executable for cycling pictures. There is one built-in to XP, but many freebies are out there for previous builds of Windows.

Personally, I would opt for a wireless NIC and mount a share where the pictures are to be stored. That way I could simply copy new pictures over to the system from my main computer.

Linux Toys

[desktopj]

Picked up a book by Chistopher Negus and Chuck Wolber published by Wiley Tecnology Publishing called Linux Toys [wiley.com] They do the same thing with an old laptop - something you can pickup for less than $100

Re:The trick is controlling the LCD

[TuxMelvin]

Thanks, and you're right, it can't hurt to try. Moreover, since the LCD is almost flat, why not mount it and only it to the wall, and hide the computer somewhere else? You'll have to drill a hole in the wall if you don't want to have a power cord showing, so why not just hide the actual box somewhere else? Most picture frames aren't that thick.

Another good option might allow you to flip the screen for portrait or landscape. Most of my photos are taken in portrait format.

Re:Missing the point

[Rick the Red]

After I RTFA I see he did include 802.11, but he didn't know how to make it work.

Really, is this story telling us anything a /. reader couldn't do cheaper and better?

Coolness factor has nothing to do with it

[flieghund]

You're absolutely right that your family is unlikely to give a spit about the technical specs of the digital picture frame you give them. They'll be happy that it shows pictures that change over time. Wheee!

But there's more to giving a gift that just giving someone something that's off the shelf. I'd wager that your family will appreciate a custom-made gift (if it's well-made, that is) more than something you spent thirty minutes on picking up at the mall and which they can see sitting in their neighbor's house the next day.

But what happens when the pre-built models really aren't that great? When I looked into getting a pre-built model for my folks last Christmas, the models all seemed to hover around 640x480 pixels and 8-bit color. I take my digital photos at 1280x1024 with 24-bit color, and frankly I don't think they'd look all that great at one-quarter the size and an even smaller fraction of the color palette.

Also, most of the models I looked at used a plain telephone line to download updates (new photos and the like). Everyone in my family is sitting on broadband Ethernet connections, so I'd much prefer something that at least had the option of an Ethernet jack.

And another thing: most of the pre-built digital frame companies charge a monthly service fee in order to download new content. So not only do you have to pay for the frame itself, you have to keep paying in order to use it!

So for me, the "coolness factor" has little to do with it. Instead, it's all about pride in displaying my work, being able to include the options I want, and only having to pay for the whole thing once.

how many gigabytes??????

[Anonymous Coward]

"Figure you'll need somewhere between 1,000 and 4,000 pictures per gigabyte depending on whether you bother to resize the images, plus another gig or two for the Linux installation."

Re:Missing the point

[barawn]

they're horrible for viewing at anything other than dead-on; gamma and contrast change drastically from side to side or above/below

Yah, valid point. But the digital photo frame does actually generate light, so it does draw attention to itself.

Further, if I have a great photo, I want it to always be there, or at least be instantly accessible. No easy way to do that here...

What if you have 5 "great photos"? Then you either take up a huge amount of wall space, or cycle through 5 of them slowly in a digital frame.

framing a picture means it was good enough to warrant said treatment.

How many people have a ton of picture albums rather than a ton of frames? The reason you only hang pictures you consider important is that the frame + the picture enlargement cost money, and the wall space is precious.

I have a lot of pictures from a lot of trips that I'd love to have hanging on a wall for people to see - especially right after I've taken the trip - but I don't know if I'd want to go through the money to have it hanging for a long time.

they need a power cord, which is fugly

Not very creative, are you? Here's what I've come up with so far to hide the power cord for mine:

1) Grab a potted plant, put it beside it, run it down behind it.
2) Hang a picture or something behind it, run it behind that.
3) Drill a hole into the wall behind it, drop the cord down to the ground, drill another hole and plug it in there.

the LCD panel won't last very long being on all day, every day; the backlights are rated for a few thousand hours tops.

Is 50 a few? Most are in the neighborhood of 50K hours, which is about a year of constant use. And it wouldn't take that much fiddling (you can even do it in Windows!) to turn it off during crazy points of the day. Plus the 50,000 is of course a worst-case: backlights have routinely lasted for far longer than that in constant commercial use.

they have vastly inferior resolution; high-resolution LCD panels aren't available anywhere except in laptops. A standard print from even, say, Walmart's digital photo lab machine...is at least 300dpi, more like 600dpi.

Oddly enough, you don't need high-resolution - pictures look very good even at 640x480 at larger than 6" x 8" if they're on an LCD. Plus the added benefit of having consistent lighting (via the backlight) makes the color representation look much more vivid and lifelike.

Hard drives especially don't like heat...

Hard drives, if not being accessed, can last for a long time with in a moderate heat setting. All the pictures sit in memory. Spin down the drive, and put it in full sleep mode.

Archival photo paper, with UV-blocking glass, mounted with acid-free materials, will last decades

Digital photos last forever. And that's just natively! Physical frames, however, can get damaged just as easily.

Of course, you're forgetting the main reason: it's a PC, for crying out loud! Get creative! Drop a wireless keyboard, wireless mouse, 802.11b card. Boom, instant easy Web access at your fingertips anytime (the number of times I've grabbed movie times from mine...). A normal frame can't do that.