DIY 20" photo frame?

[WebmasterCricket]

I'm pretty sure I am going to attempt to make a 20" WS photo frame for wall display. Has anyone else attempted anything like this or know of someone who has? I'd rather eliminate as many issues as possible before I start rather than during or --gasp-- after.

I'm not so much concerned with software or control as I am with heat dissipation and light spill issues. I'm quite handy and I have an awesome set of tools. I swear on all seven of my fingers!

[MarkBarbieri]

I worked up a rough prototype of a 19" system, but decided it was too small. I'm waiting for a good deal on a 32" LCD before I do it.

I used an extremely lower power motherboard. I think it was an EPIA mini-itx board running at 500mhz.

I used a laptop drive, but I think when I build it again, I'll use a CF card as a boot drive instead. I'll build the machine with a hard drive, whittle it down to the bare minimum needed to run, and then ghost it over to the CF card.

With an extremely low power motherboard/cpu and no hard drive, power consumption should be below 20 watts, not including the display.

For the display, I plan on stripping off the plastic shell and building it into a matted frame. Of course, even with a very lower power PC and an LCD monitor, you still need to get the heat out of frame. I'm debating several options.

Option number one is to just use some small fans and vent the top of the frame backwards into the wall. I've got to cut into the wall to run the cables anyway.

Option number two is to build a large heatsink into the frame or even make the entire frame from metal and just dump heat into it. This sounds like the best solution, but I don't have the skills to implement it.

Option number three is to just go traditional and have some slots for air intake at the bottom of the frame and a few small fans and slots at the top of the frame for expelling warm air.

The final option is sort of a copout. I'm thinking about just mounting the 32" TV with a traditional mount and feeding photos and video to it from a nearby dedicated computer running the cables through the wall. It's the simplest and most practical solution, but the least cool.

[deletedpenguin]

What a great idea! Although it is a copout, it seems like the easiest, and least expensive option.

[WebmasterCricket]

I have a 20" Dell WS with HDCP I'm not using so I'm sort of tied in with that for cost sake. A 32" would be great and as soon as I find one for free, I'm all in :)

I'm cutting a recess pocket in a wall to get the lowest profile I can get and running the DVI and power cables down to my basement (I think). From there I can do just about anything. I'm debating a bluetooth mouse & keyboard set up that I can hide in a drawer near the frame so it can be used as a PC if ever need be. I could just run everything from a remote workstation and allow the PC to run the slide show from a Flash application but then it's more of an appliance. It would take photo files and display them in numerical order from a network folder so to change out photos, I just change the order in the folder from the remote PC on the LAN. I can turn it on and off with a macro command scheduled at certain times.

Venting with a fan tube (PVC with fans at both ends) isn't too difficult to do, but does complicate things a bit. I guess I can wait and see how hot it gets but then I have to work on it twice if it does run too hot in the enclosed space.

I think my only out of pocket expenses at this point would be the wood for the frame, A DVI video card (I could just use VGA but I'd rather have 1 to 1 pixel maping) and bandaids.

[WebmasterCricket]

Oh, and I have to buy a cheap VESA wall mount too.

[deletedpenguin]

I saw this today, and it reminded me of this thread...

http://blog.scifi.com/tech/archives/2006/06/01/a_computer_so_s.html

[cryssi]

wow, that's pretty cool...

I never even thought of making our own digital photo frame...DH has been talking about this ever since they came out, but he wanted a much bigger one than was available..

he's a big tech gee...um, junkie, so I will ask him if he's thought of making his own...hmm...

[DueyDooDah]

The final option is sort of a copout. I'm thinking about just mounting the 32" TV with a traditional mount and feeding photos and video to it from a nearby dedicated computer running the cables through the wall. It's the simplest and most practical solution, but the least cool.

You could make this a bit "cooler" by going wireless.