I have an old laptop. It’s a PIII 733Mhz Dell Inspiron 5000, which you may recall weighs about as much as a small Yugo. This laptop is old enough that I don’t use it, but good enough for some use. So I’ve decided to attempt the creation of a Linux based LCD picture frame. I’m not the first to attempt this and this guy has some good guidance.
So far, I’ve managed successful disassembly, and the bits and pieces still boot. The system is currently running Fedora Core 5 off an IBM Travelstar HD.
Considerations for the future are:
1. Should I boot off some solid state media instead, and if so, where should pics be stored?
2. Can I run this PIII without a fan if it’s a sufficiently open case?
3. Do I want to try to remount the trackpad and keyboard, or just go with auto-networking and remote management?
4. Software details: auto-login, scripts to start the pictures, poll the usb port and add pics, FTP access to pics directory
5. Mounting and framing.
I’ll keep the geeks up to date on the project, especially when I need some help.
It sounds to me like the software challenge needs to be solved first, then comes the construction phase for the actual frame. I think working with solid state memory would be great – and being able to remotely operate everything would be desirable as well. I have no idea how to do that though ;)
The software components will depend somewhat on the media choice. With a 12G HD in there, I can happily run Fedora with Gnome, which allows me to use GDM for the autologin and to run a script to start the slideshow. I’m using ‘feh’ for the slideshow, and I’ve noticed that on FC5 it can’t overlap the Gnome panel, though on my FC6 box it does just fine.
If I move to flash, then I’m looking at some reduced space probably. In that case, I might consider a leaner distribution/install without the bloat of a *fancy* window manager and graphical login utility.
Sweet project. Like Tim E, I have no advice whatsoever, but I look forward to seeing the final project.