Episode: 124
Title: HPR0124: Digital Picture Frame
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0124/hpr0124.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 11:47:35

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more.
Hello and welcome to Hacker Public Radio.
I am the Miro Vinci, coming to you today to discuss a little DIY project.
I've been touring around for several weeks now with the idea of building my own digital
picture frame because you can go on Instructables.com, you can Google it and find hundreds of different
ways that people claim to be the ideal or the best or suggested way to build your own digital
picture frame using an antiquated laptop.
However, I found that for all of these different instruction sets on how to build your own,
that they all seem to use newer laptops than the laptops I owned that I could do this
project with.
I mean, I've got this one laptop out in the garage that's got Windows 95 on it, a floppy
disk drive that doesn't even work, no network, anything to it, not even PCMC and IA slots,
and there's no way in the world for me to even consider tearing that thing apart and
building it into a picture frame.
And these websites just don't cover that.
So what I would like to do with today's Hacker Public Radio is instead of telling you
how to build your own, instead I want to encourage you to build your own and to just think logically
about the process of building your own and some things that I've learned from building
from doing my own digital picture frame that you should take into consideration.
The first one isn't even the laptop, instead merely the operating system that's on it.
Because depending on what you want to do, you could use it solely as a digital picture frame.
There are some other people who have done a digital picture frame that would show random
pictures, but then also if you did a keystroke and it would bring up a homepage or bring
up some other functionality to it.
So with those sorts of ideas of things that you might want to do with it, you might want
to consider what operating system you want to put on it.
Do you want to put a Windows on there?
Is the Windows going to do what you want?
Would you rather put a Linux on there?
And with these ideas of what operating system you want to use comes with functionality
that you want to give it and so on and so forth.
I'll admit that with the laptop I had, despite having a CD-ROM drive, the hardware was so
bad on it that I could not boot from any bootable CD.
Now that includes a Windows bootable CD or Linux bootable CD.
Because let's face it, I'd much rather put a Linux on there.
However, I just, you know, for the life of the machine could not get it to boot.
So therefore, I'll admit this, this is hard to say, but I'm stuck with Windows
and me on my digital picture frame.
But you know what?
It works because even Windows and me has a random picture screensaver that you can set
it to a particular folder and it'll just, in the screensaver, will just loop pictures
from that, you know, from that folder.
So then the next question that kind of comes up is, how do I want to add content to my
digital picture frame?
Because, you know, if you are able to make it net capable, well, you know, then you can
just, you know, set up a share folder or set up some sort of, you know, network accessible
drive or device or, you know, maybe you're going to just, you know, if you've installed
a Linux on there, something maybe you're just going to SCP, you know, photos up to, you
know, to the digital picture frame.
And so, you know, so with mine, I was able to add a wireless network card to it and create
a Windows share, which I was not aware Windows and me was capable of, but apparently it is,
and create this, you know, simple share that I can just dump pictures to it.
But of course, you know, to make your digital photo or your digital picture frame net capable
means that, you know, there are some security concerns that are to be had, you know, with
said device.
Now, I'll admit, you know, putting, making a network share on a Windows and me machine.
In fact, I probably even have a Windows and me machine on the, on the internet is probably
not the smartest of ideas, but, you know, quite frankly, if it gets hacked or destroyed
or decimated, you know, oh well, I'm out a, you know, eight-year-old IBM thinkpad.
Oh, that's a bummer.
It's a big bummer.
But you know, it's something I'm just going to have to live with.
Another question that kind of comes up is, is how many cables are going to be going to
it?
You know, I mean, most people will go, go with the laptop route of building a, a digital
picture frame because they want as few amount of cables involved as possible and a lot of
times the only cable you enough with is the power cable.
But again, you know, if you're wanting to make it net capable, if it has a ethernet jack
on it, we know now we're talking about two cables and stuff.
Luckily, I was able to add a wireless network card to it and, you know, and was able to add
that functionality and yet keep it, keep my picture frame down to one cable.
Another question that comes up and it was probably the most difficult part for me was
to this, was figuring out what exactly to place the digital picture or the guts for the
digital picture frame in because obviously, you know, we're calling it a digital picture
frame.
So we think, well, we just want to put it in a picture frame.
The problem comes up then that the average picture frame is designed to hold a singular
sheet of paper.
I mean, normally it has an image printed on it, you know, sometimes you can put your
diploma in there, you know, whatever sort of accolade that you would like to.
And they're not really designed for a LCD monitor plus laptop motherboard, you know, hard
drive that were card, power supply, all that jazz, they're just not designed for that.
So then the idea comes up that, you know, maybe a picture frame wouldn't be the best option.
Maybe something like a shadow box would be a good idea.
You know, you can buy shadow boxes and I think, you know, two, three inches, something
like that, which would be more than enough space, you know, to put, to put all the guts
of a laptop into because, you know, the laptop in its shell, you know, and its original
state is probably no more than two to three inches.
So you should be pretty good.
But in my case, I just, I did not have a shadow box available.
So I did use a regular picture frame and, and something that, that became handy was
just keeping all the original parts from the laptop around because, therefore, a while
of one of my iterations of my digital picture frame was I used parts out of my laptop, you
know, to help piece it all together.
I had put the LCD screen back in the plastic housing, you know, that was attached to the
laptop and had kind of, you know, stuck that into the picture frame.
And ultimately, ultimately, though I didn't use any of those pieces instead, I used several
sheets of cardboard and cut out forms to fit everything into.
And then I was, I was capable of putting all of the forms and all of the pieces into
the picture frame and kind of, and kind of sealing the back shut with other pieces of
cardboard.
Now, it's, you know, it's not as ideal as I would like it because, of course, I would,
I would love to use the original back to the picture frame that came with, you know,
this particular picture frame, but it's just not, not something I can do right now.
Maybe after a little, a little cut, you know, cutting here or there and, you know, I might
be able to get it to work.
But, you know, ultimately, it's something that, you know, I'm fairly pleased with, you
know, I tinkered around with a little, you know, here and there this weekend.
And so all in all, I mean, a fairly simple project, a fairly, you know, cool project and,
you know, just an overall great project.
Definitely, you know, want to encourage people, you know, to check this out and to, you
know, if you have spare components lying around spare parts of laptops, you know, you
might try and piece that stuff together and build your own digital picture frame because
who knows, you know, maybe you, you know, if you're like me, you know, kind of into photography
and stuff.
And it'd be kind of nice to have your own little picture frame, you know, rotating pictures
of like that.
Maybe, you know, it's, you want to gift it to someone, you want to give it out to someone.
You know, these two are great, great ideas.
But you know, whatever you want to do with it is your own.
And I would definitely, again, just encourage you to go out and into build your own digital
picture frame.
But the biggest thing that you can do when building your own picture frame is, is thinking
before you do something.
You know, go ahead and kind of plot it out, figure out what you want to do with it.
You know, go and look at supplies that, you know, your neighborhood hobby store or, you
know, big store or whatever like that one mark, or whatever home depot.
And you know, check, check those places out and see if they don't have, you know, parts
that you can use, maybe parts that you can't use and just kind of go from there.
I've included, I've got a couple of pictures from this weekend of me building my, my digital
picture frame that should be in the show notes, you know, they're just ones, ones of the picture
working, ones of the picture after it's booted and then the other one is the back of the
picture frame and so you can kind of see, kind of see all the pieces forming together.
But the picture I have currently is not of the final product.
I will hopefully be getting some pictures of the final product up over the next few days.
So this has been another episode of Hacker Public Radio.
Thank you for listening to Hacker Public Radio, HPR is sponsored by Pharaoh.net, so head
on over to C-A-R-O dot E-C for all of us here.
