My latest "project"

I got sick of my closet space being taken up by the ever growing number of photo albums over the years, so I went digital and started scanning in all my old pictures. It didn't take too long to scan them all in and organize them, surprisingly. But now instead of closets, they were buried in my computer. I needed a cheap way to display them and cycle through them. (Right now I am looking at a picture of my neighbor's kid dressed up for Halloween and petting my pet dog--read on, you will understand).

I looked into those electronic picture-books, but they were cumbersome to operate, had tons of limitations, and were quite pricey. I knew that I needed a laptop-sized display with the ability to run a simple slide-show program...so I decided to sacrifice an old laptop I had lying around. I broke off the plastic surrounding the screen and was left with a wafer-thin LCD panel. Then I broke off the hinges and folded the keyboard up behind the laptop and velcroed it into place. (Now looking at the Le Mans-winning McLaren on its victory parade lap).

I decided to see what I could do with that and a $10 frame. I had to grind some ridges down in the back of the frame so that the screen would lay in there nicely, and now I have to attach an external USB keyboard or access it over the net to do anything, as its own keyboard is upside down and behind it. But all in all, it works really well. I have put in 10,000 pics to start, so I shouldn't see the same pic more than once every ten days, even if they change every minute. Friends, family, cars, trips...all right there! (Now looking at my dad playing with my nephew).

If you want to do this, take your time. You will need to have a way of removing the desktop icons, but there's tons of utilities on the web for most MS operating systems (my old clunker was running win98). Also, be carefule with the screen and wires...they are notoriously flimsy. It almost didn't happen because my laptop died suddenly. I actually threw it away in my trashcan last night, but the cleaning service took it out and put it back on my desk today. I gave myself two minutes to fiddle with it this morning, and miraculously it came back to life! (Now looking at a sunset in Hawai--and someone who could quite possibly be Allanlambo's wife!)

Next step is to install a VNC client so I can operate it remotely, and go over the top and bottom silver borders with a black marker...

 

Well, it's been up and running for a couple of hours...it's absolutely fantastic! I don't know if I will get any work done in my study now! I highly recommend that you guys do this...just get a cheapo laptop off eBay, take your time and be careful, and it will come out great!

Mike, my machine's using Windows 98.

Right now I am looking at a stained glass ceiling that used to be in a cruise ship, but has been moved to a shopping center in San Francisco...I forgot I took this pic a couple of years ago. Here's a couple more pics it pulled up--last one's for NNO.

 

Well, burn-in and burn-out are two different things. Burn in is when you display the same picture for days on end, and you get a "ghosted" image even when displaying something else. This won't happen, as the pictures are changing constantly.

Burn-out...no more risk than in ordinary usage. I think it's a rarity in laptop-sized screens, and much more likely in the larger LCD panels. If it does happen, they might not honour the warranty when they see what you have done--hence the recommendation to use a cheapo off eBay, or one supplied by your employer!

Enjoy (currently looking at a fantastic bridge that connects Macau to a nearby island).

 

NNO, they have digital cameras that can cycle through your pictures right on the small LCD screen in the back (my Sony camera does this). For your product concept, you'd just need that hardware with a bigger screen and without the camera mechanism. Easily doable. I wouldn't be surprised if one doesn't show up on the market soon. Thing is to do it cheaply enough ie. $100 and you supply the memory card/capacity.