Society of Robots - Robot Forum

Electronics => Electronics => Topic started by: dcole07 on November 20, 2007, 11:59:03 AM

Title: Digital Picture Frame
Post by: dcole07 on November 20, 2007, 11:59:03 AM
This isn't quite a robot, but I wanted to make a Digital Picture frame. I have an old Axim X5 Pocket PC that I could convert. I had posted this in electronics, but now that I think about it, it's going to be more programming than anything else.

The Axim X5 is a touch screen with color and has a SD card slot. I would like to make it so when it's turned on it picks a picture from the SD card and displays it. Then when the screen is touched, it moves to the next image.

I do know a couple programming languages and am in an intro to electrical engineering class, so this should be too far out of my reach. Could someone give me pointers as to where to start?

-- The JPG view is going to have to start up automatically when the device is turned on.
-- It's going to have to find an image in the SD card.
-- It's going to have to move to another image when the screen is touched.
-- I'm going to have to remove the pocket pc body so the frame can be next to the display.
Title: Re: Digital Picture Frame
Post by: Half Shell on November 20, 2007, 12:14:57 PM
I did this with a really old laptop for a huge picture frame.

My advice - look on instructables.com, makezine.com/blog, hackedgadgets.com, etc and see if someone else has done something similar. I'm pretty sure someone else has done something like this before and you can find some valuable information.
Title: Re: Digital Picture Frame
Post by: Admin on November 22, 2007, 11:02:24 AM
http://www.popsci.com/popsci/how20/a4a95adebbf6a010vgnvcm1000004eecbccdrcrd.html?s_prop18=how2
Title: Re: Digital Picture Frame
Post by: paulstreats on November 23, 2007, 10:25:46 AM
ive just had to do something similar to my laptop.
A lot of abuse from my 2 yr old son left it without any hinges meaning the monitor was loose and only attatched by the cables and a cracked frame.
I decided to rehouse it, and while i was making a case/ frame, i decided to just mount the lcd onto the motherboard and house it like a digital photoframe, it has enough usb ports to plug in a keyboard/ mouse whenever necesarry, so when were not using it i just have a picture slideshow running.

I have a lot of amazed reactions from people when i pull it out to use, although its actually quite an easy mod to do.

The most difficult part was rearranging the cooling system, it used to have a fan that blew thrugh a cooling grill but that meant it would be blowing directly onto the back of the lcd.

Ive kept the old touchpad mouse and keyboard, i want to make long enough leads and custom connections to use them instead of usb parts but i cant be bothered right now.

Title: Re: Digital Picture Frame
Post by: dunk on November 23, 2007, 11:15:45 AM
interestingly enough, when i was looking for ARM based devices to use as robot controllers i came across a few links about people doing the opposite.
for example: http://www.heeltoe.com/software/ceiva/Ceiva-mini-HOWTO.html (http://www.heeltoe.com/software/ceiva/Ceiva-mini-HOWTO.html) describes how to turn a LCD picture frame into a computer.

dunk.