Digital Photo Frame

Had to do something with that old laptop, so what can fit more than a digital photo frame.

Used a IBM T22 notebook that was working really really slow and could not be used for everyday usage.

I was googeling around for similar projects, till I decide to make one on my own.

I started by stripping down the laptop, so I can fold the LCD display backwards.

I had the front frame lying around, fitting glass was bought.

Everything was constructed with the use of any kind of glue, only screws and different metal clips and pieces.

I chose Ubuntu as the operating system for this frame, and used LXDE as the desktop environment (very light on resources - it's a Pentium III 500 Mhz CPU and 512MB memory).

I was hoping the wakeup option in the BIOS will actually turn on the frame each day at a specific hour, but turns out it does not work (or maybe it does not work since I took the battery out, the frame is running directly from the power supply), so I manually turn it on when needed.

The frame is running a command line application named 'qiv', which displays pictures from a specified directory for 10 seconds periods. Every round hour a full screen digital clock is displaying the time (cool simple application called 'dclock'), and slideshow continues afterwards.

The frame has a WiFi adapter running, so I can upload new pictures using ftp, and control the frame using SSH client.

We placed the frame of the TV cabinet in the living room, which makes a perfect display location for more than 7,500 pictures we took since the start of 2005, when we purchased our first Digital Camera.