Things to come
So now I am the proud owner of my very own digital picture frame, and all that for a total cost of less than 20 euro (for MDF and a can of black spraypaint). Nice! But does it really end here?
No. Because during the time of this project, a few other ideas sprung into my mind. As I've said earlier, the biggest advantage of a project like this, is that it remains a laptop - and thus a computer which can still be used to do other stuff, besides just showing pictures.
Eventually I'd like to have a pictureframe/backup machine. In my office there are several computers, and one LaCie ethernet hard disk which serves as a primary backup medium for those computers. But that means that I need to make backups from time to time, which are started manually at the moment, and this can get delayed or even forgotten from time to time. Challenging Murphy is a nice little hobby, until he finally gets his revenge :)
Meanwhile I'm writing a little tool in Java that can handle my backups. This little tool will scan if the ethernet disk is live, and if other machines are live. When it finds the disk and at least one machine, it starts backing up said machine to the ethernet disk, all the while showing pictures in the frame. This way I'll always have a recent backup just by watching pictures! The result should look similar to what's shown in this mockup screenshot.
Naturally, I'd need a different operating system than PC-DOS for this, so chances are that a hard disk will end up in the picture frame in the end. But given the fact that at this moment the picture frame works, I now have a lot more time on my hands to look for a suitable hard disk.
Another idea would be to build some kind of network monitor into the picture frame. The possibilities are endless of course - do you have a nice suggestion? Why not let me know, and I'll list it here on the site for all to see!
Next page: The hard disk »