Old PowerBook + Hot Glue = Cheap Digital Picture Frame

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...

Hot PowerBook + Old Glue = expensive scrap metal on the floor

Market penetration...

Congrats to the author of JPEGView... your program is now running on someone's picture frame :-)

cute

Ive been looking for a lowend notebook at my local swap meets, never been able to find one. The swap meets here are populated with hundreds of 486dx33 maybe a pent90 or 2 every once and a while I'll see a mac but they always want too much money for them, never seen a laptop thoe, hmm

I don't see the point?

Seems like a waste of electricity to have it plugged in all the time (you do have to plug in it right?) Why not just have your picture printed and put it in a real frame? I know, it costs money, and it's only one picture -- but you can have as many of them as you want. If it had buttons where you could change the picture that would be cool.

Cool!

That rules! How much can these old powerbooks be had for is the next question? I'd like to do something similar.

Software

Cool idea - but it seems a bit of a risk to configure the software, then rip the laptop apart and hope it all works when it's hot glued back together. Plus, once it's set up, you wouldn't be able to change the slideshow settings.

Gotta be a more elegant hack for this. Any Mac experts with opinions?

Re:Software

The problem is going to be the laptop used - the Duos never had an ADB port for easy connection of an external keyboard or mouse (or a SCSI port to run the computer in SCSI target mode).

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.

Some info on my pic frame project

Great article. I'm working on a laptop to picture-frame conversion too.

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

erm, and just think about having your networked picture frame 0wned and pointing to goatse...:-)

Linux laptops

zgv is a nice image viewer, very reminscent of the DOS VGA viewers. Slap it onto an old laptop with an old ethernet or slip serial connection and you can be all set...

ThinkPad version

Here's another page [interruptx.com] where somebody did this with a ThinkPad. (This one's not so involved; the guy just flipped the keyboard back behind the screen).

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

Well, that does it for me. I'm definately going to switch [apple.com] now!

v1.1

The whole "set it and forget it" concept is ludicrous, especially if you know Duos. But the concept is cool. Two fixes that make it a lot more appealing (IMVHO)..

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.

eBay

Easy to find and inexpensive. 280c's are always up for auction on eBay and regularly sell for less than $100.

Not while this story is on the front page of Slashdot, they won't.

Now a new idea but new twists

I just picked up a Thinkpad 560 on ebay cleap and am doing the same sort of thing, but a little differently.

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...

Meanwhile some kid in Africa gets a TRS-80...

...and thinks it kicks ass! C'mon people, why build something as excessive as a digital picture frame out of something somebody else could actually use.

who else made a crappy laptop with a small screen?

Anyone know any popular brands of x86 laptops that had small screens (say 10" or so) which might be on ebay cheap these days? I'd love to build one of these things, but I don't want to bother with appletalk, etc.

Oh wow..

It works on iBooks too!! Cool!

wow

When a couple geeks invade New Yankee Workshop! [newyankee.com]

It does look pretty cool.

Touchscreen conversion

It'd be cool to see a hack like this that added maybe a couple of buttons just behind the edge of the frame, or better still a touchscreen. This would give so many more options - such as it doubling up as a front-end to a burglar alarm, web browser, email client, MP3 player or whatever else could be used with minimal controls.

How long will the screen last thoe

Laptop screens cant be on all the time esp old ones I've sceen many a laptops screens getting totaly hosed after being on all night, I left a p200 12tft screen with a friend 2 months after I bought it (2700$)(he dint have a computer and I dint need it at the time) and he turned off power management and fell asleap with it on when he wone up the right side of the screen had melted, I was pissed to say the least

I want a screen saver...

I can see the advertisement now.

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?

Slight suggestion

Yes I like the idea of VNC, but I don't think this model has a PCMCIA slot, but you can use a Newertech microdock for ethernet networkability.
Also according to apple-history.com this model only consumes 25W of power, making it pretty cost effective.

LCD and DVD player

Many DVD players now support picture cds, so you can just go to ebay and buy one of these 5 inch LCDs [ebay.com] for about $40, stick the LCD into a picture frame, and have a digital picture frame for less money and less work... (did i mention that the resolution isn't great? oh well, we can't have it all).

But holy crap..

it dosen't run linux! what self respecting ghetto hardware hacker creates a ghetto hardware hack not running linux! :p

[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

Why limit it to pictures?

You've got a very capable little machine there. There are all sorts of other doodads you could use on that for different decorating plans. Having several of these, each running 3D screensavers, around your living room would be quite striking.

Probably cheaper than this..

The picture frame that the Discovery Channel Store sells, made by Ceiva, that is found here [ceiva.com], charges a monthly fee plus initial purchase price. Imagine having a few of these frames for a few years.. adds up quick.

Add 802.11

Adding a 802.11b card would make for all kinds of yummy uses, besides uploading pictures, it would be cool to run that program which sniffs graphics going over the air...

Bridge the digital divide.

Before you turn your laptop into a picture frame, consider giving it to a student or child that will never have a computer of their own without assistance.

How did your first computer change your life?

Would you be where you are today without having had it?

Framerate...

Finally, something a Mac has a high enough frame rate to handling! He was probably inspired by first person shooter games that, on a Mac, look like a slide show.

Yeah, I know. Troll. Flamebait.

P.S. If you are a Mac user, don't get your panties in a twist and start posting benchmarks. It was just a joke.

Fuck!

Fuck! My picture frame crashed!

Fire Hazard

Wasnt there a thing with powerbooks catching fire a while back?

draw your own conclusions...

Here's some I worked on...

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

A digital picture frame is already made by a company called Ceiva, you can find out more here [ceiva.com]
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

We did this too, this time using a previous model Ti-book which had been dropped:

http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~njh/electronics/wal lmount/ [monash.edu.au]

This 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...

http://www.nullgel.com/legoart.html [nullgel.com]

It's in the shape of a Gameboy.

Dynamic web pages on your picture frame

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.

Kodak Picture Frame

Seems like a lot of trouble to go through (although I"m impressed by the big screen). I picked up a Kodak picture frame last winter when computergeeks was blowing them out for $100. It has no subscription and reads compact flash. The screen's not huge (4x6) but it looks great in its cherry wood frame. Just set it on slide show and away it goes. There is about a four-second space between each slide. I especially like the fact that it doesn't crash on me.

Let the Ebay hording begin

I bet this guy has a ton of these old laptops. Now he can unload them to all the Slashdot geeks on Ebay...

pc Mod site.

So will we ever see a picture of this "mod" on those crazy sites?

Compaq Conversion

I have couple of Compaq Contura Aero [kinnetica.com] Laptops laying around in storage. It's a really shitty device and got windows 95 installed on it.

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

Chech your head

really late entry into the flame,...just here for historical reasons,...

Apple has done alot for open source, more than M$ has at least of late. I really can't see why anyone would argue,...your're arguing about the same sides to the same coin. Mac OSX and Linux are in the same boat.

While everyone is crying about M$,...we should tear the open OS movement apart because some don't think the hardware is open enough? At least Apple is trying,...have you checked out "Palidumb". Historically, Apple has encouraged innovation,...not with open hardware (which would be nice) but with their hands off attidute with what people do with their own information. There is no DRM in APPLE. I love open source, I push it whererver I can... but to be snobbish about it is lame. Put that interface on Linux, put it on any operating system, make it easy to use,....that's what Linux has been dying for and Apple is the ones who can actually bring it to the people.

Sorry, but in an OS war, Gnome, Lindows (come on????), as good as it is will not be the thing that makes most people to "switch",...it will be OS X. Apple is doing a great job, and rumor has it that they've developed OS X on a x 86 [slashdot.org], so,....no mre fighting...were all on the same team anyways, right?

Why not add a dock?

My first thought was: why not add a mini dock to the picture frame?

But then again, that would be pretty easy to do compared to the making of the frame itself. Thus, one should hack the slot-in Duo Dock so it accepts the frame. ;-)

That would give you not only ethernet but also a NuBus slot. With an old video grabbing card you'd be able to upload video clips to the picture frame. *drool*

Imagine a Beowulf cluster...

...of recycled obsolete apple laptops....

Power cost?

Just from curiosity, what is the power cost for running this for a year?

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.

get the 270c if you want *x on it

Check the linux/m68k page if you're thinking of putting linux on this, installing a null-modem adapter on the serial port, and having a remotely-addressable picture frame. 68LC040s are VERY FLAKY, and the 280c is one of the first using this cpu.

The 270c, same cpu speed but 68030, has a built-in FPU (68LC040 FPU emulation can lock the cpu)

Check the m68k hardware requirements [linux-m68k.org] in the FAQ for more info..

Hmm, I might actually do this... Any linux serial 802.11 recommendations? ;)

Original author

If anyone has any questions, I'm the original author of the AppleFritter article.

Sony have already done it...

...If money isn't really a question, and if I could choose between the two I would certainly pick this [salon.com]/this [bestbuydigital.com].

$100... wow

...just a small TFT LCD display would cost you substantially more than that on digikey... it could be worth it to get one of these just for the parts...

So who has started to work on one?

Anyone still reading this thread?

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?

Low power frames

Two ideas: Something like net booting a scaled-down version of Linix (or similar) and retrieving the photos from a server - either via ethernet or wireless? OR Engineer a hack so that the complete OS (scaled) and photos could be loaded onto a digital media card - no HDD necessary?

Re:Powerbook

Actually, all Mac laptops after the Mac Portable were called PowerBooks, even though they used 68k procs. The name has nothing to do with the processor. Daniel

Re:Powerbook

My condolances sir, but neither did the early PowerBooks:

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

Apple released a whole bunch of PowerBooks with Motorola 680x0 chips, way before anyone ever heard of the PowerPC line.

For instance: http://www.ou.nl/open/psl/pb100/#spec [www.ou.nl]

~jeff

Re:Ok ... How do you upload stuff onto it?

You hook up another "old ass computer" with an AppleTalk cable.

Re:Powerbook

And of course, there's the 2300c, which is a Duo with a 603e processor. But you can't be expected to be right all the time. God knows I'm not.