DIY Digital Picture Frame
From Makers Local 256
Creator: |
Contents
[hide]Overview
See DIY_Digital_Picture_Frame/Old for previous attempt utilizing a laptop.
Digital picture frame using an embedded system. Utilizing a dockstar and a displaylink USB-to-VGA Adapter.
Amazingly big thanks to brimstone. This project mostly consisted of me asking how this could be done, and learning while brimstone typed his magic.
Steps
Displaying Local Files
- Get dockstar running debian squeeze with an 8gb thumb drive.
- Have displaylink adapter plugged into dockstar, and screen plugged into adapter.
- Confirmed that udlfb driver was working with linux kernel (got the green screen when plugging in displaylink adapter)
- Installed X windowing server
- Installed feh (image display program)
- Edit /etc/rc.local so that on reboot it will run "startx" to start the x server
- Create directory to store images in
- .xsession:
- Put .xsession in the root directory ( / )
- Edit .xsession so that it won't go into powersave mode and turn off the screen
- (TODO: add dpms line here)
- Added line to .xsession to start the feh program.
- (TODO: add example feh line here)
Future Plans
- Add wireless. Brimstone mentioned he had success with Dlink DWA-125.
- Pull Images from a samba share
- Pull Images from a gmail account
- Pull Images from a facebook album
- Pull Images from flickrfs
At this point, on boot, feh should start cycling through pictures on the local memory
Resources
Physical
- Old Dell LCD Screen
- USB-to-VGA Adapter
- Dockstar
- 8Gb Thumb Drive
- Hama brand wireless 802.11b usb stick
References
- Tried this guide to no success: http://plugable.com/2009/11/16/setting-up-usb-multiseat-with-displaylink-on-linux-gdm-up-to-2-20/
- Need to try this next: http://mulchman.org/blog/?p=90
Tips from Makers
- brimstone says a displaylink adapter is ideal
- use lsmod to determine if SiS module is loaded when plugging in the adapter I have
- recommends installing xinit and xdm on the dockstar
- and then something lightweight like fluxbox or lxde
- ramgarden says to try this for adding to photostream dynamically:
- http://spoon.cx/~larcher/2009/01/06/flickr-screensaver-for-linux/
- Then you can email new photos to the flickr account for this photo frame using the special email address unique to each account.
- Then run the podget every 5 - 10 minutes or so to get the latest pictures from the flickr account.
- There might be a better way since podget will download every picture but OK if the file location is pointing somewhere with plenty of space.