Recommendations for collaborative, easy remote smart photo frame?

March 27, 2024 9:04 AM

Is there an extremely user-friendly smart photo frame that can be controlled remotely by multiple people?

My dad is in memory care in another state. I would like to give him a smart photo frame that a) the other members of my family and I can all contribute to, even though we are in separate places, and b) can be updated through a web interface from far away, with minimal hands-on time required to make it work. Are there any that are especially user-friendly in these specific ways?

This isn't a thing I would buy for myself, so I haven't done a huge amount of research on it - maybe they are all like this, rather than, like, a memory card or USB stick interface? But I mostly don't want to task my mom with dealing with something technically complicated in person. Thanks!

posted by catesbie to Shopping (18 answers total)

We've achieved this with an Aura frame by setting up an auto-updating folder (I forget the name the Aura app gives to this.). It's synced to a shared Google photo album that we've given access to several people to update, and this seems to be working well!

It did help to do the initial setup in person, but I believe you can also have the frame shipped to you, complete all setup, and then mail to the user, who will need to have it plugged in and connected to wifi, but no other steps.
posted by itsatextfile at 9:09 AM on March 27 [8 favorites]

My dad bought my grandmother (also in memory care) an Aura frame where folks can somehow load in pictures remotely—my sister and cousin used to put new pictures on the frame while living in other states. But I don’t know the exact specs. (In fact, I just got an email yesterday reminding me I should add new pictures to the frame. That’s either good or bad, depending.)
posted by leahwrenn at 9:10 AM on March 27

I think Aura works in this way? I got one for my mom and find it user friendly and update from afar- I believe they said you could have multiple users to it too.
posted by actionpact at 9:11 AM on March 27

Response by poster: Y'all are awesome. This is EXACTLY what I'm after. Thanks so much!
posted by catesbie at 9:14 AM on March 27

We bought Auras for a couple family members and have been very satisfied. They do what you need them to do.
posted by hollyholly at 9:30 AM on March 27

I'm gonna be the... fifth? person to say we bought my parents an Aura and my sister and I flood it with our stuff and my parents do exactly nothing to manage it. I have my issues with the details of how it works but it does do the thing you want, and it's a very common recommendation for this exact type of use-case.
posted by Tomorrowful at 9:38 AM on March 27 [1 favorite]

Just want to pile on to say have had a great experience with Aura. Funny thing is, with the app you can see what everyone else posts (assuming multiple people have access) and then get into little battles deleting each others' photos. Probably we're doing it wrong. But yes, the grandparents/great aunts LOVE it.
posted by moonmoth at 9:49 AM on March 27

One more plug for the Aura frames. My mom loves hers, had to do zero setup or maintenance of it, and my brother and I easily keep it filled with fresh pictures of the grandbaby and grandpets from afar.
posted by fancypants at 10:02 AM on March 27

never heard of aura, but i do exactly this with skylight.
posted by misanthropicsarah at 10:08 AM on March 27 [3 favorites]

We have bought Skylights for all the grandparents in our family, and they are so easy to update remotely from your phone.
It has been a really wonderful low-effort way to share moments.
posted by Otis the Lion at 10:22 AM on March 27

This is the primary use-case that the Skylight frames are designed for! You can update the photos from an app, but each frame also gets an email address that you can send things to in order to add them to the frame (and new senders have to be approved before their photos will show up). There's an optional subscription that lets you do some additional things, but for basic photo sharing, it's fully functional without any ongoing cost.

Full disclosure: I work for Skylight, but not primarily on the photo frames. And I do legitimately think they're a good product.
posted by duien at 11:14 AM on March 27 [1 favorite]

For one more option, I've set up a little-used TV as a giant digital photo frame using the Pixo app on Roku/iOS. You do have to subscribe, but the "1 TV" plan is only $1.50/month and well worth it imo.
posted by Rock Steady at 11:45 AM on March 27 [1 favorite]

We use Skylight (one for my mother and one for my mother-in-law). Works great. Also, thank you for the reminder: my mother recently requested new photos. I’m about to spam her with pictures of my dog.
posted by Badmichelle at 12:13 PM on March 27

You can do this with a Google Home, by setting it to display a selected Google Photos album and then giving family members access to add photos to the album.

It’s not 100% designed for just this, but you can buy a Google Home for like $20 used, so…
posted by samthemander at 12:27 PM on March 27 [2 favorites]

I haven't used the Aura, but we have a PhotoSpring frame and it works pretty well. You can add pictures from your phone using the app or from your computer using the browser. Everything gets sent to the cloud and thence to the frame (they say that they don't store any pictures on the cloud, just a checksum to avoid duplicates).

If you want an alternative.
posted by It's Never Lurgi at 3:20 PM on March 27

I'm looking for exactly this but with the added difficulty of no WiFi. Does anyone have any LTE connected frames they would recommend?
posted by flyingfox at 3:52 PM on March 27

I'm doing this with Nixplay and I am just setting it up myself and then taking it to her. as it was not that easy to learn. but I like it and it synchs with one dropbox folder with the free subscription. so after you set it up you can add photos by

email
the phone app
your synched Dropbox folder on your desktop (I'm using this one the most)
posted by cda at 12:25 AM on March 28

nthing the Aura, which we bought for family this year. It's so easy to set up and use. I can upload pics to the app straight from my phone; other family members use the email address.
posted by nkknkk at 5:03 AM on March 29