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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

#71

Post by aksss »

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…

A workaround is to use OneDrive with Camera Upload feature turned on, and then sync this back down to your PC. You can choose how to sort (e.g. folders by year and month).

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

#72

Post by eli »

CharlesW wrote: post #42
eli wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem here is that iCloud is the proprietary crap. They don't offer an appropriate API to get photos out. It'd be easier if you were starting with pictures in something more accessible. That said, I think Aura frames will sync from iCloud via their phone app. Not sure how well it works.

> They don't offer an appropriate API to get photos out. There's this: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/photokit ("The framework provides access to photos on the person’s device and in iCloud.") If you want to use undocumented APIs on non-Apple devices directly, there are projects like https://github.com/steilerDev/icloud-photos-sync and https://github.com/icloud-photos-downloader/icloud_photos_do... that ap…

Yes, you have to build an app that runs on a device owned by someone with access to the album.

Google Photos, by comparison, has a REST API.

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

#73

Post by ghaff »

fnordpiglet wrote: post #69
ghaff wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it depends. My dad would absolutely prefer something that just worked. He certainly appreciates things I make and do but, even the books I've written, he appreciates that I've written something and leaves it out in his apartment but I'm quite sure he's only flipped through the semi-technical content.

I bet he leaves it out in his apartment more reliably than if you gave him a book off Amazon. The fact he can’t access the contents of the book isn’t the point. It’s that he takes pride in something he wouldn’t normally read is because it’s yours. That’s why a DIY project for your parents is better than a shrink wrapped piece of future garbage.

Sure. And a book has a cover with the author's name on it.

But he really wouldn't thank me (not that he'd say so) for some DIY project that wasn't as transparent to use as commercial versions--and he'd end up not using it. He appreciates that I've put together the photo collections given that I've scanned and kept a lot of photos he wouldn't other have access to but he'd like actually displaying them to be as easy as possible.

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

#74

Post by meowtimemania »

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 got an "Aura" one. It works well and supports connecting a google photos album.

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

#75

Post by boringg »

boringg wrote: post #66

Can someone explain to me what the obsession with e-ink is on hackernews? I understand that it has a lot of great qualities to it but it so far out of price range that it negates the upside. Or am I completely misreading the benefits?

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

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

#76

Post by GloriousKoji »

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…

I've been using icloudpd to get photos off of icloud. It took a while the first time but after that I set it up to only download the latest 500 photos (total number downloaded is usually way under) and run it every few months.

https://github.com/icloud-photos-downloader/icloud_photos_do...

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

#77

Post by konschubert »

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.

I have been working on adding an image gallery wideget to the The Invisible Smart Screen (https://shop.invisible-computers.com)

The images look surprisingly good, even on the relatively small, black-and-white display! It definitely has its own aesthetic.

I need to hurry up and ship this! In the meantime, if you're a dev, you can probably use the image url widget to build your own image gallery: https://www.invisible-computers.com/invisible-calendar/image...

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

#78

Post by TwiztidK »

acdha wrote: post #57
Shadowmist wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/aura-frames/id990062908 I didn’t check to see if it can play from a photo stream directly, because I prefer to use the share button in Photos to send to the app. It handles Live Photos just fine, and will put vertical photos side by side.

The killer function for me would be a private shared folder so new pictures would automatically go to the grandparents. If the Aura software does that, I might have to replace the ones they have currently.

I have a Google Photos album (shared with a few close family members) that automatically adds photos of my daughter and syncs them with the Aura frames her grandparents have. We've had this setup for the last two years and it works really well. I think it's literally the use-case Aura is targeting.

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

#79

Post by j1elo »

This made me think... it would be awesome to build for my parents a picture frame that could show family photos, and was integrated with an LLM, such that e.g. my mother could say "now I want to see a photo of us during last years's vacations in Italy" or where a given person appeared, or things like that.

It would be quite a bit of work, though! Something to add to the pile of personal projects that never seems to progress :-)

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

#80

Post by GauntletWizard »

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 feel really okay with this, but I'm not okay with is that there isn't language to talk transparently about it. Facebook does the same thing (or did, because I haven't used Facebook in a long time), if you copy link to image, you can just forward that, even if the post is private.

This is pretty inherent in image sharing, though. You can just download the image, or if the website limits that you can take a screenshot (let's not get into the debate about DRM and assume that it doesn't work).

Where should you draw the line? Time limited link sharing? Login based doesn't work because you can't share with Grandma - she doesn't know how to login.

We need words and descriptions of these basic patterns, and better ways to Intuit which is in use.

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