Project: Fram'd (w/ photos)

[jboles]

After seeing a few other examples, I decided to have a go at making an old laptop into a digital picture frame. It's certainly nothing new, and has been done by many other people, but this is my first ever start-from-scratch mod, and I figured that not only would it make a great gift for my parents, it'd also be a talking point for visitors.

I first read about these many months ago, but was busy with uni etc. so finally during the last week of my holidays I've got around to getting some work done on it!

Pics/info:

I forgot to take some pics of the laptop before I ripped it apart, but it was an old IBM Thinkpad with a couple of hurdles:
- the trackpoint was broken and it wouldn't boot without it: solved with a BIOS hack
- it wouldn't boot without the keyboard attached: solved by modding the keyboard connector (comment # 11)
- a flat CMOS battery. It was a size I'd never seen before, but a quick google told me that any 3V source would do, so I grabbed a normal CR2032 battery (I have amassed quite a collection of CMOS batteries salvaged from dead motherboards )

Once those problems were fixed, things were pretty straightforward. I used nLite to put together a trimmed-down version of Windows 2000 to fit within the 96mb of RAM I had (the Thinkpad 600 has 32mb onboard, and 2 slots but I only have 32mb DIMMs) and a 512mb partition.

I picked up a CF to mini-IDE adapter on ebay for a few dollars, and proceeded to install onto the CF card. Though I used a 1gb CF card, I made the partition 512mb for the eventuality that the partition will reach its write-cycle limit (in god knows' how long) after which I can just switch to the other partition. A wifi card and RealVNC make configuration and maintenance a breeze.

I think the CF and WiFi cards make this project stand out a little among many similar projects... other ones I have seen have used USB flash drives to store photographs, or booted off CDs/hard disks. My one instead is completely silent, and will access its photos off a shared folder on my parents' computer. This will make it very easy to change the photo rotation.

Anyway, onto the photos.


The photo frame I used, a decent-looking one from Rabbit Photo. Not shown is the MDF backing board.


The screen removed from the laptop


The logic board from the laptop, with the CF card and CF to mini-IDE adapter attached. There was a modem card attached to the white connector just above the IDE connector, but of course there's no need for it so I removed it to save space and weight.


A hole cut into the MDF backing board for the screen. One edge was made wider to compensate for a narrower edge of the screen.


Close up of a small notch cut into the backing board to allow for the screen's backlight cable.


The screen attached into the backing board with hot glue. The inverter circuit board is visible at bottom right, it hasn't yet been attached. Hot glue seems to be perfect for this application. It's a strong adhesive, yet is flexible, which means the whole thing should be tolerant of the odd bump without stuff coming loose.


A test-run... it still works!


As above, without flash


Close-up of the logic board. Wireless card is visible at right.


The whole rear of the frame. The inverter board and CMOS battery have now been hot-glued in place


The front of the frame


Booting up


A custom boot screen added for shits and giggles


Still to do:
- A white/light-coloured cardboard border around the front, to hide the backing board and metal border around the screen.
- Slideshow software
- A modded power cord (thinner, longer and camouflaged)
- A way to hang it on the wall. Best way is probably to drill 2 holes in the backing board on either side, and run string between them.

[dohzer]

Very nice work.

Slightly of topic, but is the connector joining the laptop motherboard to the screen a standard one?
Also, is the a standard protocol for communicating with the screen?

[Abercrombi3]

Great work man, that looks pro! should make a bunch of them and put them all down a corredor

[nux]

Originally Posted by dohzer

Slightly of topic, but is the connector joining the laptop motherboard to the screen a standard one?
Also, is the a standard protocol for communicating with the screen?

If you are thinking of hooking one up to a normal PC, think again

Looks good, I hope to have one mounted and running in the next few weeks. Thread is here.

[RyoSaeba]

Originally Posted by jboles

- A way to hang it on the wall. Best way is probably to drill 2 holes in the backing board on either side, and run string between them.

Awesome work there.

The hanging method you might want to rethink it further. I've had frames dropped down before because the string broke.

[Blagy]

awsome to see my old laptop been to good use . very nice jboles

[dohzer]

Originally Posted by nuxie1

If you are thinking of hooking one up to a normal PC, think again

Nah, I was acually just more interested in an "embedded systems" type way, and I was just wondering if laptops these days have a standard display output port.

[jboles]

Thanks everyone

dohzer: The screen is from the same laptop as the logic board, so all I had to do was rearrange the screen's ribbon cables and plug them back into the same sockets on the logic board.

nuxie: That thread is an interesting read, I'll comment on a few things discussed:
- I went with Windows simply because I didn't want to try messing around with drivers in Linux.... Mac OSX is about as close as I get to Linux otherwise
- Re: automagically swiping photos off USB keys. I intend to have that too. I'll probably just have an endlessly looping batch file that delays 5 seconds, checks if the USB drive is valid, then uses XXcopy or something to recursively swipe all JPEGs off the key and dump them on the server. An equivalent under Linux would be pretty simple too.
- If one wants to stick with Windows (as browca04 did in the other thread) I think 2000 is much better than XP, especially if hard disk space is limited or RAM is not upgradeable further (as in this case).
- The whole thing (everything [laptop, wifi card, cf card, picture frame]except W2K, which is *cough* not yet legal) cost well under $150. Ditching the WiFi and CF cards (using USB photo upload and a hard drive instead) would bring down the cost substantially, at the expense of a little noise and inconvenience.
- I considered enclosing the whole thing but decided against it in the interests of ventilation and aesthetics. The whole setup is surprisingly thin (I'll take a photo when i next work on it) and it's hard to see that there's actually stuff behind the frame.
- Slideshow software. I may just go with some photo screensaver. It'll conceal whatever batch script is running in the background (see above) and a 1min startup delay will come in handy allowing the wireless connection to get going when the machine starts up.

RyoSaeba: I'm actually thinking of heavy duty fishing line or even wire, to be more specific. Or I could glue some kind of metal loop or tab to place on the wall hook, but I don't trust one glob of glue with the entire weight of the thing :-) And the frame/backing board are way too thin for screws.

[SteakTheMooCow]

If it's going to go onto a plasterboard get the plasterboard screws and secure one or two screw eyes to the back of the frame... then you could hang it triangularly with fishing line or otherwise. Keep in mind a laptop's weight, stripped and reconfigured, probably weighs less than 2kg and therefore the thinnest wire at Bunnings ($10 or something for 10m (don't quote me on that, it's been a while, sure of the price, just not the amount ($9.96 last time I looked, but didn't check length because it was too weak ))).

[jboles]

I'm thinking of something like this for the mounting. 2 loops of string for added weight distribution and a modicum of 'redundancy'



Also, here is a quick batch script I put together, it uses Robocopy (a Microsoft tool available freely on the net) and RemoveDrive. It checks for the USB drive every couple of seconds, and when it finds one, it automatically snaffles all the .JPGs off it and then unmounts it. It does all this in a new window so that it's easy to tell when the copying's done. All I have to do will be to walk up to it, plug in the digital camera, wait for the copying to finish, then unplug the camera

@echo off
:start
:: Main batch loop

:: Delay a little while (couple of seconds)
ping 127.0.0.1 -n 2 > NUL

:: If the USB drive is connected, snaffle all the JPEGs off it
if exist g:/ call :snafflepix

:: Loop back to beginning
goto start


:snafflepix
:: The purpose of 'start /wait cmd /c <command>' is to open the copying in a
:: new window in front of everything else, so that it's easy to see when it's finished.
:: /S = recurse subdirs
:: /R = set retry count for failures, default is (stupidly) 1 million
:: /W = set retry wait for failures, default is (stupidly) 30sec
:: /XO = exclude older files, in case 2 copies of the script try to copy concurrently.
start /wait cmd /c robocopy g:/ testdir *.jpg /S /R:0 /W:0 /XO

:: Unmount the USB drive. RemoveDrive is from:
::    http://www.uwe-sieber.de/usbstick_e.html
removedrive g: -l

[MrSmith]

Pretty cool, but whats with everyone stealing defyant's style of mod name for now? lol.

When I started my mod, it was only defyants name, thought i'd do it for fun.. then loads of other people did it

[.LiQU!D.]

Dude, that's going to be fucking awesome!

[fist4jesus]

I built mine early last year.

http://www.prettyfar.com/gallery/digital-frame

[xinzhitan14]

wow this looks amazing.. i heard about this before in one of your other threads.. i believe.. it's a nice idea.. great work! keep it up

[lil_kimmo]

wow great work love the frame idea... keep it up