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Building an e-ink picture frame that displays an iCloud photo album

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Re: Building an e-ink picture frame that displays an iCloud photo album

#111

Post by krabizzwainch »

sho_hn wrote: post #59
jgrahamc wrote: post #18

I've built a few things with eink displays and I strongly recommend NOT using simple picture frames (unless they fit perfectly). One way to get a really good looking result is a custom frame. There are tons of custom framing company that will cheaply make you a frame that fits the display with the appropriate cut out. https://blog.jgc.org/2023/05/a-better-case-for-my-inkplate-1...

I did that for my Rust/LLM-based e-ink AI newspaper: https://imgur.com/a/NoTr8XX Custom frame by Halbe Rahmen, who I think make the most magnificent frames in the world, with the most loving team behind them. Not a shill; whenever I interact with the Halbe staff for anything I feel it.

Wow I absolutely love that. The cost of the larger ones has been prohibitively expensive for all the stuff I want to do. I did make a small weather display with one of Waveshare's 6 inch screens, then I 3D printed a stand that gives it a nice frameless look.

Re: Building an e-ink picture frame that displays an iCloud photo album

#113

Post by Rebelgecko »

sho_hn wrote: post #59
jgrahamc wrote: post #18

I've built a few things with eink displays and I strongly recommend NOT using simple picture frames (unless they fit perfectly). One way to get a really good looking result is a custom frame. There are tons of custom framing company that will cheaply make you a frame that fits the display with the appropriate cut out. https://blog.jgc.org/2023/05/a-better-case-for-my-inkplate-1...

I did that for my Rust/LLM-based e-ink AI newspaper: https://imgur.com/a/NoTr8XX Custom frame by Halbe Rahmen, who I think make the most magnificent frames in the world, with the most loving team behind them. Not a shill; whenever I interact with the Halbe staff for anything I feel it.

Super cool! What kind of battery life do you get in practice?

Re: Building an e-ink picture frame that displays an iCloud photo album

#114

Post by jbverschoor »

hammock wrote: post #100
hammock wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you considered MIP displays?(1) Memory-in-pixel displays are commonly used on watches, wearables and they can display up to 64 colors in theory. They have high-contrast even in bright ambient conditions. Example of a color MIP display is the Garmin handhelds: https://www.garmin.com/en-US/p/553168 The largest one I can find in production is only 4 inches,(2) but a tablet-sized one could be great as a display. The…

AKA transflective, AKA Memory LCD. It neither looks as good as the ipad, nor does it use no power (at idle) or read as easily as the kindle. It still has to use a little power, but it has the advantage of the fast refresh of an LCD, and a million times better than the ipad in the sun

For a reader/ note taking pad, or even a tablet, that sounds perfect.

Re: Building an e-ink picture frame that displays an iCloud photo album

#116

Post by bandergirl »

podviaznikov wrote: post #52
robluxus wrote: post #39

> iCloud photo albums have no API. However, if you share an iCloud photo album to a public link [...] How do folks feel about the security vs. convenience aspect of this? I almost talked myself into doing this for our shared family albums, but I know I really shouldn't do it. Some of our older family members run Windows and iCloud sharing is just horrible there. Basically, the photos keep disappearing from their comp…

I even have build a small product to show apple shared albums online https://public.photos/ also wanted to add API on top so that people can show photos however they want. But didn’t have a time to finish it yet.

That’s cool but why not fetch the photos via URL? Seems easier than having to maintain an email inbox

Re: Building an e-ink picture frame that displays an iCloud photo album

#117

Post by vineyardmike »

riotnrrd wrote: post #70
vineyardmike wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

…or buy a cheap digital picture frame from . When my g-parents passed, and the family moved away, we bought everyone a cheap digital frame linked to a shared family album. They’re like 50-200$ depending on size. My grandmother was always bringing the family together, and we wanted to honor that with way to see each other across geographies. Our chosen company’s albums have an email address that you email a photo to,…

What brand and model did you buy? I've been looking for something like this for my family.

I think it’s NixPlay. I think they’re commodified though so I don’t know how much brand matters.

Re: Building an e-ink picture frame that displays an iCloud photo album

#119

Post by sho_hn »

Rebelgecko wrote: post #113
sho_hn wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did that for my Rust/LLM-based e-ink AI newspaper: https://imgur.com/a/NoTr8XX Custom frame by Halbe Rahmen, who I think make the most magnificent frames in the world, with the most loving team behind them. Not a shill; whenever I interact with the Halbe staff for anything I feel it.

Super cool! What kind of battery life do you get in practice?

March/April to October or November or so in my first run :-)

Re: Building an e-ink picture frame that displays an iCloud photo album

#120

Post by WWLink »

Lord-Jobo wrote: post #63
robluxus wrote: post #39

> iCloud photo albums have no API. However, if you share an iCloud photo album to a public link [...] How do folks feel about the security vs. convenience aspect of this? I almost talked myself into doing this for our shared family albums, but I know I really shouldn't do it. Some of our older family members run Windows and iCloud sharing is just horrible there. Basically, the photos keep disappearing from their comp…

Its actually damn near impossible to retrieve all of your photos/videos from icloud for a backup if you are using a windows machine to do so. It will constantly fail to sync fully, duplicate files, takes eons to download even on a fast connection, and there are bizarre file format conflicts with certain types of images. Very infuriating, and its been an issues for at least 5 years. 'Buy a mac if you want to actually…

TBH, the Photos app on Macs is just as bad at this. Especially if you have a LARGE album.

I'll give you exactly the use case, and exactly why that is:

I decided I didn't want to pay for the family 1tb icloud plan anymore because 90% of it was being used up by my brother taking silly pictures and videos all the time. So I had him get an external SSD and set him up with the Photos app to download to it.

~900gb of images and videos. It took OVER. A. MONTH. to download. The whole time the photos app was being very cagey about when it would bother to download. To an M1 iMac. With an 500mbit fiber connection and connected via ethernet.

I think they do that on purpose to discourage people from quitting icloud. They want to keep you dependent on their cloud storage and they REALLY don't want you taking your files back.

I fucking hate icloud. I hate the way apple uses dark patterns and is so naggy about having an icloud membership when using an iPhone. I hate their crappy cloud syncing software too.

I ended up back on icloud later because, well, reasons... but I moved my own photo/video syncing over to onedrive. Now let's not get ahead of ourselves - one drive is a piece of crap too. But at least it's consistent on all platforms. And it's cheap as fuck.

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