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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

#131

Post by josefresco »

LASR wrote: post #45

For those who want less tikering: Two 24 inch monitors bought from a design house auction connected to 3rd Gen Chromecasts. They automatically boot up and display a Google Photos album that contains pictures of the family and pets. These monitors are set to power on at 8 AM and off at 10 PM. Initially my wife hated the idea of having two monitors in the living room. But after I put them in place, we both found it is…

+1 for Google Photos and Chromecast or Nest Hub

I take photos on my iPhone, Google photos automatically uploads and I can set my Google devices to show a specific album or a "highlight" reel which is pretty awesome. Not only does it show recent photos, but also photos from the same time the previous year (ala social media "memories"). It's a wonderful, automatic memory machine!

More info here: https://support.google.com/googlenest/answer/9136992?hl=en

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

#132

Post by [deleted] »

yetanother12345 wrote: post #11
acdha wrote: post #7

I’m mildly surprised that this isn’t an official product. I have half a dozen relatives I’d give “AirFrames” to if Apple made them or let a third party do it, especially if they had decent handling of Live Photos.

The keywords that you would want to enter into your preferred search engine are: Digital Picture Frame At this point in time that is already a regular product category. The OP could just have bought one, but chose the DIY path.

[deleted]

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

#133

Post by allarm »

ska wrote: post #87
boringg wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why did I get downvoted - I am asking a legit question. I don't understand.

I suspect because you came across as judgmental and opinionated more than questioning. I'm not saying you meant to, just that is how it could read.

> I suspect because you came across as judgmental and opinionated

No, they did not.

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

#134

Post by Johnny555 »

jbverschoor wrote: post #114
hammock wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

As long as you only want to use it in bright light. I almost always need to use my Garmin watch's backlight indoors since it's just not bright enough to see otherwise.

And while the display is great outdoors, the colors are muted compared to what you'd see with an OLED or traditional LCD display.

I use my tablet indoors much more than outdoors (and it cranks up the display brightness to be usable in pretty much any light other than full direct sunlight, and I rarely sit in the direct while using it), so I don't think I'd want an MIP display on a tablet.

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

#135

Post by croutonwagon »

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…

By most standards im fairly security conscious. IE: No listening devices/alexa/google home in the house. For the most part no cameras or mic's inside (obviously cant get past the phone thing). Generally i prefer to self host stuff (ie: my security cams are local only and have no interenet access.)

That said I DID setup a public shared album to share to a Dakboard....Its also one i share with family.

The URL is so long, from a privacy standpoint its less a concern. The facial details are already on the internet due to family sharing stuff on facebook etc. None of the photos are particularly revelealing and nothing i wouldnt care if they were on a billboard...So meh. I doubt i could be targeted to find it and anyone stumbling across it wont see anything they wouldnt see if they drove by my house and saw my kids playing in the front yard. We also dont religiously post to it, so its not like anyone is going to glean we are out of town because of something we put there.

TL:DR - meh, not much a concern on my end, despite other concerns that may border on tinfoil.

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

#136

Post by ska »

allarm wrote: post #133
ska wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect because you came across as judgmental and opinionated more than questioning. I'm not saying you meant to, just that is how it could read.

> I suspect because you came across as judgmental and opinionated No, they did not.

Note I said it wasn't clear that they meant to be, just that you can see how people (those downvoting) could read it that way. It was quite categorical, and "obsessive" has negative connotations.

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

#137

Post by BanjoBass »

WWLink wrote: post #120
Lord-Jobo wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 image…

Yup. iCloud is just my most recent photos. Once my 200gb starts getting full, I go back and delete photos and videos year by year until i'm down to the last year or two. My entire library is still backed up to a NAS which has offsite backup as well as google photos.

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

#138

Post by sho_hn »

rob74 wrote: post #129
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.

Thanks for the pointer! I'm from Germany too, and been considering a similar project (using an old tablet) for a while now. This is another company however that would have been better off if the founder wouldn't have used their own name for it. My first thought was "why buy half a frame from these guys when I can get a whole frame elsewhere?" Nice project BTW! However the coffee stain doesn't look very realistic in b…

I definitely need a 3-color e-ink display black/white/brown ... :-)

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

#139

Post by clash »

literallyroy wrote: post #112
clash wrote: post #106

Very nice. If you don't have the time to build one yourself, you can also buy them here: https://framelabs.eu/ Note: I sell them.

These don’t support an iCloud album do they, only photo uploading over WiFi?

Actually my devices can download from remote sources as well. An iCloud bridge is be necessary, though.

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

#140

Post by sho_hn »

iamacyborg wrote: post #127
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.

> 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. Bold statement, what are they offering that's better than going into your typical framing store?

I really like their magnet lock thing :-)
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