My digital picture frame

I finally did it: I build a digital picture frame. After I bough my new camera (a Canon EOS 350D) I thought it would be nice to be able to display my pictures in a frame on a wall.

Well finally, it is not yet mounted to the wall, I will wait with this step for my new flat. But the picture frame is now running on DSL, booting from a cd and running completly in ram what results (after boot) in a completly silent computer.

How I did it:

I took my old Dell Latitude 300 that I didn’t use anymore and turned it into something usefull:

1.) I took the Laptop:

2.) Ripped it apart (look at how I collected the screws – I did this in undo mode):

3.) Glued everything into the frame (My secret love is my Heissklebepistole):

4.) Booted linux (dsl is really a damn small linux):

5.) And displayed pictures (using feh and unclutter):

The expenses were 78 Euros for a custom made picture frame and 10 Euros for a ‘heissklebepistole’ (hot glue is really what holds the world together).

I wanted the frame to be made from aluminium (that was simply the picture I had in my mind). Additionally I thought it would be good if the frame would be deep, deep enough to hold the computer and the display – what is a contradiction to the aluminium because aluminium frames can’t be really deep. So I ended with the idea to let the display cover the hole in the passpartout and the engine below it and somehow connect both. This is the main reason why the passpartout is that large.

I contacted these guys at Danziger Strasse, Berlin – mainly because they are near to the plaze I work at – but it turned out that they really know what they talk about. So whenever you need a picture frame – what kind ever – go there and tell them what you need.

When receiving the frame and doing first tests it turned out that the display and laptop still fit above each other in the frame that is 32mm deep. So I glued the display to the passpartout (invest the 10 Euros and take the most stable and thickest one you can get) and carefully glued the mainbord on the top of the display to not threaten parts of the display that might be carrying electronics by the high temperatures of the hot glue.

I downloaded DSL and did a couple of test runs on my current laptop in a virtual machine (astonished about how fast a computer can boot). The main reason to choose DSL is their Wiki that said that my PCMCIA Wlan card is supported nativly (a power cord is enugh, I do not want to add a wire for lan access).

After booting, everything was fine, except that the original keyboard (that I reinstalled to be able to install the linux) stopped operating. Not really stopped completly, but it seems that I managed to disable the left half of the keyboard… so installing DSL on /dev/hda is impossible. After crying a bit, I found out that I am able to install a virtual keyboard only using my PS2 mouse what led to the information that I also killed the harddisk.

So I ended up in a setup that boots from CD and fetches images via rsync from my server. I took and modified scripts from this guy ending in the following code:


#!/bin/sh
#
# Script to run Digital Picture Frame using Feh
# drware@thewares.net
#

exit 0


what removes the mouse cursor and randomzies images that are stored in /home/dsl/photos/ every 2 minutes (what is nice now, later every 86400 seconds (or every day) will be fine).

conclusions:

• install linux on your laptop first. I nearly managed to glue everything in the frame without being able to change the cd in the cd bay
• invest the money in a nice picture frame. it is the most visible part of your digital picture frame
• hotglue is a great thing
• learn how to switch off the screensaver in DSL (honorable mention to the person that sends in valuable hints)
• it is fun and a real add on to your home

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