Old PowerBook + Hot Glue = Cheap Digital Picture Frame 188
option8 writes "Have an old laptop gathering dust? Here's another fun hack from Applefritter - this time utilizing an old Mac laptop (a Duo 280) but could be applied to pretty much anything with an LCD, and turning the guts into a cheap, flexible digital picture frame. Now, off to the flea market to pick up one of them cheap Duos I keep seeing..." As the author points out, this isn't a new idea -- but it's a great step-by-step.
Not to confused with... (Score:2, Funny)
Market penetration... (Score:3, Insightful)
Congrats to the author of JPEGView... your program is now running on someone's picture frame :-)
postcardware (Score:1, Funny)
Re:postcardware (Score:2)
You could send him an e-mail... (Score:2)
aarongiles.com [aarongiles.com]
Apparently he received somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 postcards, although I'm sure he'd be happy to get a couple more.
cute (Score:1)
I don't see the point? (Score:1)
Re:I don't see the point? (Score:1)
Re:I don't see the point? (Score:2)
You can also turn if off at night. Macs can do auto on/off very well.
Re:I don't see the point? (Score:1)
Re:I don't see the point? (Score:2)
Of course, the monitor draws a ton of power making it more wasefull than a headless firewall box but it's an idea.
Cool! (Score:2)
Re:Cool! (Score:2)
Re:Cool! (Score:2)
Software (Score:4, Insightful)
Gotta be a more elegant hack for this. Any Mac experts with opinions?
Re:Software (Score:1)
Re:Software (Score:2)
Re:Software (Score:1)
Re:Software (Score:2)
Re:Software (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Software (Score:3, Insightful)
Or they could have used a laptop with an ADB port for keyboard and mouse.
Daniel
Re:Software (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Software (Score:2)
I don't see why not. An ethernet, or serial connection would work just fine. VNC for the Mac works great. If you don't want VNC, install Unix on the Mac and use telnet/ssh.
Re:Software (Score:1)
Re:Software (Score:4, Insightful)
In one of the pictures, he mentions leaving space in the frame to run a LocalTalk cable (the one port the Duos did have), so you could network the Duo to an older Mac.
The easiest thing to do is to set up the viewer program to run on start-up and automatically start a slide show using a pre-determined folder of pictures. Then when you networked over, all you would have to do is to add/remove pictures from that folder.
I imagine you might have to use a little AppleScripting to get the slide show set up to automatically run on start-up.
Re:Software (Score:2)
Sell the notebook and buy a cheap 15" panel (Score:2)
Hide the motherboard someplace, it's not that difficult - nail it to the wall, stash the case behind a sofa, get a miniATX board - many choices. Configure the hard drive to spin down and load the images into memory, which the slideshow program should do easily. Most older machines will run low-intensity tasks a-ok, espeically under linux, with no cpu fan attached - remove it. PC gear, especially used, is so damn cheap it's almost stupid.
Then you have a much more functional unit that can do other things.. I was thinking of putting something like this in the kitchen, except set up to display the current weather forecast, the status of my servers, and a couple webcam shots of my workplace so I can see what's going on.
IMHO this is a pretty poor application for an unwanted notebook. They're great for a email machine or something to surf channel listings in the TV room, though. Especially if you get 802.11 on the go for your house, which I absolutely love.
My $0.02cdn
Steve
Re:Sell the notebook and buy a cheap 15" panel (Score:2)
Jeezly crow, man, come join the rest of us in the 21st century! I'm a 30 year old dirt-poor undergrad student and even I have a half-dozen laptops WAY better than that gathering dust under my desk. Heck, I have a P166 Dell laptop for email and TVguide on the sofa, and that's almost too lame for my tastes.
"It'd at least make a good machine to do [simple task]". I hear people say that kind of stuff all the time, but they're usually wrong. A "good machine to do [whatever]" is best defined as the best machine at the bottom of the price curve. Those powerbooks aren't all that great for $100 when one can get a decent IBM Thinkpad with a MUCH better screen for around the same price. At some point older equipment must enter the "crap zone". That is, the machine must one day be too weak to be usefull, but not old enough to be "classic" or "nostalgic". A Duo 280c at 33mhz, 4MB RAM, no PCMCIA (thus no 802.11b, friend), and no SCSI is definitely in the Crap Zone.
Re:Software (Score:2)
Install linux on it (yes.. I know its cliche). You can remote access it and do anything you want with it, just make sure you have a network option available.
Secondly, get a spare laptop, or anything that can access the HD, and just do work on the HD as necessary from a separate computer and "reimplant" it.
-Restil
Some info on my pic frame project (Score:5, Insightful)
Mine is an old Toshiba 205CDS with 24 meg running Debian and hooked up to a new flat-panel display, so the display itself is the frame.
The software is Mozilla 1.1 in full-screen mode. It simply tunes into a page on a web server (could be the same server, but in my case it's not) that serves up refreshes are regular intravals. My friends and family have access to a web page where they can directly upload their pictures into my frame and provide captions. They can also build pages of their own and just sent the URL (this is a big advantage of having a real browser running in the frame).
The poster was a lot more ambitious than me in many ways. I never even thought of chopping up the laptop and making such a professional-looking package. Now I think at least I'll get rid of the laptop's LCD panel.
Re:Some info on my pic frame project (Score:2)
Re:Some info on my pic frame project (Score:4, Funny)
Linux laptops (Score:2)
ThinkPad version (Score:5, Informative)
Make sure you only try this on a computer you don't care about losing!!! I killed a NEC laptop messing around with this. Those ribbon connectors between the LCD and the motherboard are FRAGILE!!!
Switch (Score:3, Funny)
v1.1 (Score:1)
1) Just put an ADB port on the side. This is difficult? Then when you want to change pictures (hey there's a thought) or run the new updated JPEGView, you can.
2) Above, plus Localtalk/Ethernet, and let it pull pictures off your G4 in the office.
3) Hack a WiFi card into it, and control it via VNC or Timbuktu.
NOW you're talking!
Or you could always turn it into a fishtank. No one's ever done that.
Re:v1.1 (Score:1)
eBay (Score:5, Funny)
Not while this story is on the front page of Slashdot, they won't.
Now a new idea but new twists (Score:1)
Instead of putting the images on the laptop, I just setup an X server with a wireless card and from my main box (which has all the images on it and displays my photo album via a web interface), I dump the image on the remote X display via the wireless connection.
Now if I could only get wireless power I wouldn't need any cords...
Re:Now a new idea but new twists (Score:1)
Tesla would be proud of you! : )
Meanwhile some kid in Africa gets a TRS-80... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Meanwhile some kid in Africa gets a TRS-80... (Score:1)
Tum te tum te tum.
Tum te tum.
Think that's 20 seconds yet? Perhaps I should learn to type more slowly.
Re:Meanwhile some kid in Africa gets a TRS-80... (Score:1)
Re:Meanwhile some kid in Africa gets a TRS-80... (Score:1)
Re:Meanwhile some kid in Africa gets a TRS-80... (Score:3, Insightful)
Then, get him electricity, and then give him an old obsolete computer.
In the meantime, let people recycle things if they want to, its a good habit to have.
Re:Meanwhile some kid in Africa gets a TRS-80... (Score:3, Funny)
why spend your time posting on slashdot when you could be building shelters for the homeless in Peru?
Re:Meanwhile some kid in Africa gets a TRS-80... (Score:1)
I think he could use the electricity to power the TRS-80 hunk of power-wasting junk first. Just a thought...
who else made a crappy laptop with a small screen? (Score:1)
Re:who else made a crappy laptop with a small scre (Score:1)
I know something better... (Score:2)
It set me back about $300 a year ago.
Best of all, no work needed at all.
Jon Acheson
Re:who else made a crappy laptop with a small scre (Score:2)
Oh wow.. (Score:2)
wow (Score:2, Interesting)
It does look pretty cool.
Touchscreen conversion (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Touchscreen conversion (Score:2)
How long will the screen last thoe (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:How long will the screen last thoe (Score:2)
I'm not sure what version of MacOS he's running, but you could set the automatic shutdown and startup to bracket the times that you are sleeping/at work to save a bit on the screen and battery.
I want a screen saver... (Score:2, Funny)
Introducing a new picture frame that's:
-With a built in Fan so you can hear just how hot your picutres are!
-Visible only from certain angles to keep prying eyes from seeing your precious photos
-Capable of being infected by a virus or taken out by a trojan. Imagine all the fun and games when some hacker draws a swastika on grandma's forehead
-Ugly to prop up while showing your eternal love for unnecessary keyboards
-Runs for almost 2 hours without plugging in!!!
-Consumes just 15 watts per hour so it only costs you about $50 a year in power costs
And if you act now we'll throw in a free screen saver to prevent pesky burn in.
Ummm really, is this progress?
Re:I want a screen saver... (Score:2)
Re:I want a screen saver... (Score:2)
Slight suggestion (Score:1)
Also according to apple-history.com this model only consumes 25W of power, making it pretty cost effective.
LCD and DVD player (Score:1)
Re:LCD and DVD player (Score:1)
But holy crap.. (Score:1)
[end scarcasm]
seriously though.. that frame turned out great, I might consider building one myself, although it would be much more flexable running *nix (uploads via ftp or smb, remote access, etc) but I don't know about getting x to run on a duo, heh
Re:But holy crap.. (Score:1)
Why limit it to pictures? (Score:2)
Re:Why limit it to pictures? (Score:3, Funny)
Probably cheaper than this.. (Score:1)
Add 802.11 (Score:4, Insightful)
Bridge the digital divide. (Score:5, Interesting)
How did your first computer change your life?
Would you be where you are today without having had it?
Re:Bridge the digital divide. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Bridge the digital divide. (Score:2)
three decades old.
try understanding unix without it.
included with OS X.
go to the command line, type vi.
that is your shiny new mac.
with a three decade old text editor in it.
Runs perfectly the same on a duo with NetBSD.
I used a IIci as a mail server running NetBSD.
A IIci is the half the speed of a DUO.
Ask me again what a child can learn on a DUO.
Running NetBSD/8.1, there is absolutely Nothing a child can't learn on a DUO.
Re:Bridge the digital divide. (Score:2)
NetBSD for when they decide they want to know how it really works.
Photoshop is a great choice for kids.
It only requires 30-40 units of college classes to understand it. While we're at it we can throw Maya on it. Or better yet, we can put Pov-ray on the NetBSD side.
And I'm shure they'll just love working with Access databases too!
You can't run AOL on a mac plus (Score:2)
But can you run a modern web browser on a mac plus? (Oh sure, you can hack a web server into one, such as camneerG, but...)
But until you can get AOL 6.0 running on the 68000 processor I don't think you are going to have enough of a draw for the average person to want some old, crappy hardware.
SURE- they can type papers on it, but does it have enough to hold their interest? For you and me, the mac plus was enough. But I think for most it isn't.
just my two bits. I'd actually LOVE to be proven wrong!
Re: (Score:1, Troll)
Fuck! (Score:1, Flamebait)
Fire Hazard (Score:1)
draw your own conclusions...
Here's some I worked on... (Score:3, Interesting)
http://peach.mie.utoronto.ca/people/tsangc/frame10 0-index.html [utoronto.ca]
I did this with a friend using a PowerBook 100. I also have a PowerBook 520C one too...
http://peach.mie.utoronto.ca/people/tsangc/journal -frame520running.jpg [utoronto.ca]
And here's my friend Victor's:
http://www.chuma.org/projects/pictureframe/ [chuma.org]
Calum
This already exists (Score:1)
It's only like $100 from some places, and it can either be in single-picture or slide-show mode. Plus, it dims in low light and a button can advance you forward.
The only catch is that it's a subscription service, and you have to pay like $5 a month, but it's still a nice piece of technology.
digital frame and firewall too (Score:2, Interesting)
We did this too, this time using a previous model Ti-book which had been dropped:
http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~njh/electronics/waThis ti-book provides a firewall, airport basestation, digital frame and interface to our heating unit, and all for less than 50W continuous power :) The LCD frame stayed on as we agreed it looked nice anyway, and nobody could find a small enough torx screwdriver to open the case.
And yes, typing on the keyboard is hardwork.
I did this with LEGOs and an old 486, see it at... (Score:2, Interesting)
It's in the shape of a Gameboy.
Dynamic web pages on your picture frame (Score:3, Interesting)
Assuming that you have a network connection, a solution that could run on many operating systems and be very effective would be to install a web server/database combination (like LAMP) and view with a browser that runs in full-screen/near-full-screen mode.
A simple web design could put your image in the frame's viewing area and hide any OS-junk. With a few scripts in a language like ColdFusion or PHP connected to a database of images, one could easily create a picture frame server. Upload an image to the correct directory via FTP and it gets put in the display queue automatically. Use META REFRESH tags or some other reload method to cycle through images.
It would be easy and free to use ColdFusion with Apache and MySQL or some other database to make this all happen. There are single IP developer versions of the ColdFusion 5 and MX server available at Macromedia's website [macromedia.com]. Either of these would be enough to set up an image server really quickly with the caveat that ColdFusion 5 is way more stable on Linux than ColdFusion MX. Because you can simply upload to the server via FTP, the single IP limitation isn't so bad. On the other hand, if you already know something like PHP, that might be the way to go.
One question that I have is this: would be possible to cut up a keyboard and attach new buttons to it that could be mounted on the front and back of the frame and could allow the OS to be rebooted?
If that's possible, then another advantage of using a browser would be image control. Because Javascript can log keystrokes and then do things. Because you get to pick which browser the system runs on, you don't have to worry about compatibility and accessibility issues. Forward and back buttons mapped to any keys on the keyboard could control the image and those buttons could be mounted on the frame.
Finally, to respond to the digital divide comment: I work in Chicago's public housing projects (the poorest neighborhood in America) and I've given lots of computers to residents of the development where I work. Honestly, nobody needs or wants a Duo 280c. A good activist and hacker should continue to have fun making and hacking and breaking things while being generous and helping others. Things like this aren't excessive or selfish as much as creative gestures that show that it's people who should be the ultimate beneficiaries of technology.
Compaq Conversion (Score:2)
I wonder if it's possible to go through the same conversion with those. Because essentially it's the same concept and the dimensions are the same too, compared with Duo 280
Or the real question would be, is it worth the trouble? Alternatively I could wipe the windows from there and install tiny linux. Is it a good good idea? I have some time to burn
Re:Compaq Conversion (Score:2)
If you were going to do this with a PC why even bother with Linux? That's overkill. Just install DOS on it and use one of the JPEG/GIF slideshow programs running out of autoexec.bat. If it "crashes" or locks up, just cycle the power and it'll reboot. DOS would take less than 1MB of memory to do this and be quite a bit faster at booting than the Linux version on that machine. www.freedos.org
Power cost? (Score:3, Informative)
I assume it will be running with the LCD active 24/7. Nothing seemed to imply a normal time-based shutdown (as if anyone here keeps "normal" hours anyway...) so that seems a valid assumption.
That said, what's the power usage for this, and therefore what is the approximate cost to run this for a year?
No, I'm not an eco-freak, I just like to know how much something will cost before before I jump in and do it.
This [apple-history.com] says 36Watts for the Duo 2300C. Okay.
36 * 24hours = 864watt-hours.
365 days of this = 315360 watt-hours, about 315kilowatt-hours.
My power company charges me about 6 cents per kilowatt-hour. This will cost about $19 per year in energy costs for me.
Amazing, that's actually low enough to be acceptable.
$100... wow (Score:2)
So who has started to work on one? (Score:2)
I won a crappy old Thinkpad on eBay yesterday. 10.4" TFT screen. The screen is a little bigger than I wanted, and it's only 8 bit, but for 50 bucks even if I end up not liking the results, who cares? Anyone else starting to build one of these?
Re:Powerbook (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Powerbook (Score:3, Informative)
PowerBook 100 [apple-history.com]
PowerBook 100 [apple-history.com]
PowerBook 100 [apple-history.com]
Well, you get the idea
So, exactly how DOES your sock taste?
--NBVB
Re:Powerbook (Score:1)
The first one is the PB100, then the PB140 then the 170... you get the idea...
Re:Powerbook (Score:2)
Not as bad as I thought.
Re:Powerbook (Score:2)
The underwear in case I get hit by a train, and the socks in case I have to swallow my own foot.
--NBVB
Re:Powerbook (Score:1)
Re:Powerbook (Score:3, Funny)
For instance: http://www.ou.nl/open/psl/pb100/#spec [www.ou.nl]
~jeff
Re:Powerbook (Score:2)
Re:Ok ... How do you upload stuff onto it? (Score:1)
Re:Ok ... How do you upload stuff onto it? (Score:1)
(lots of Talk)
Re:Ok ... How do you upload stuff onto it? (Score:2)
Alternatively, you could simply use a Newer EtherDock (good luck finding one, you can't have mine!) and treat it like any other Mac running Mac OS 9.
Re:Ok ... How do you upload stuff onto it? (Score:2)
Re:Kodak Picture Frame (Score:2)
I have two of the Kodak frames (also from computergeeks.com), one in my office and one at home. I almost wish that I'd bought up a batch to re-sell - people love the things. I scale down a fresh batch of my favorite digital photos every few weeks and put them on a pair of old 8MB flash cards for display. It couldn't be simpler.
I also have an Audrey set up to do something similar, though it pulls images off a shared network folder.