WishFilter: A digital picture frame that'll pull from our Flickr account with no fuss?

November 30, 2009 5:14 AM

I'm looking to buy a digital picture frame. I've never done this before. Wants and needs inside.

So, my wife and I left Brooklyn for Korea earlier this year. Our families miss us very, very much. We thought a nice gift for them would be a digital picture frame- We take a lot of photos.

However, some of our family members are more tech savvy than others. They run the gamut from 'Could Linux themselves out a paper bag' to 'Where do I get stamps for my e-mails?'.

What we're looking for: First and foremost, it'll pull from our Flickr account. Once a day? Twice a day? Whenever. This also means that it's WiFi enabled. Asking them to load up a memory card or whatever just isn't going to happen.

No subscription fees. I didn't even know this was a thing.

I'd be happy to hack one together from an Arduino, but I won't be able to get the parts in time and that sounds like more project than I have the time for right now.

Suggestions? We've never shopped for digital picture frames before and it looks like there are a lot of chances to waste your money.

posted by GilloD to Technology (7 answers total)

This is the one I drool for.

It does all the things you ask, plus it has a stupid name.
posted by Sallyfur at 6:52 AM on November 30, 2009

I have a digital frame that does exactly this (Kodak W1020), and I wrote about it over here.
posted by bent back tulips at 8:38 AM on November 30, 2009

Chumby?
posted by k8t at 8:39 AM on November 30, 2009

You should have access to an excess of older laptops... even a brand new netbook is cheaper than most photo frames. Check out many examples on Instructables

Essentially, with a good deep frame you can just remove the hinges for a laptop lcd and flip it to place into a shadowbox frame or similar. Many different OS's you can run, but I currently have 6 of these in various relative's locations that I can remote into to make mods or changes and they all pull from a website (Flickr could be substituted easily) In my own home I have 4 of these around the house and they pull from a local network directory and display only the last few weeks of digital photos I have on the server.

I have everything from a Pentium 233mhz Compaq laptop to a P4 1.8ghz sacrificed to the cause. Instructables shows many different options on different software and options (I prefer a boot flash drive (I use a short flexible USB extender) so that I can mod files and it always knows what to do after a power cycle.

I'd post my own projects but I got all my info from the instructables. If you have more money than time, I do like Thinkgeek's product (linked by Sallyur)

Good luck!
posted by emjay at 10:28 AM on November 30, 2009

To clarify, I use a bootable flash drive because I remove pretty much everything (hard drive, cd, floppy, excess casing plastics, etc) except the battery to make it as light as possible but still able to ride out the power outages.
posted by emjay at 10:30 AM on November 30, 2009

Hm. I first thought of the Eye-Fi card, a flash card that uploads pictures over wifi, but it looks like no one's gotten them to download pictures yet.
posted by Pronoiac at 10:20 PM on December 1, 2009

I gave the Kodak W1020 to both sets of grandparents, and unfortunately the software is too terrible for me to recommend it. My mother in law somehow touched something and can't figure out how to get back to Flickr, even though it's all configured. The iGala looks worth a try.
posted by jimgreer at 2:49 PM on February 16, 2010