Re:Panic-inspired Dashboard Made From Photo Frame for ~$150....
by patio11 on Saturday March 13, 2010 @01:12PM
(#1189284)
Just an unsustainable schedule this week, which is why I am quitting. I think I probably hit 80 hours plus commute. Still, midnight to three, midnight to three, plus Saturday was enough for this.
Note that my budget for BCC is usually five hours a week. I am efficient because I have to be. One tactic is to make email check only Must Be Done task. Now I can get away without actually checking due to frame, for mornings without support email.
Re:Panic-inspired Dashboard Made From Photo Frame for ~$150....
by alanthonyc on Saturday March 13, 2010 @01:05PM
(#1189276)
Awesome. If nothing else, I'm going to put one up that has the "# Days Until I Quit My Job" metric. It's technically the days until my current gig ends and I can work full time on my project, but it will work for me.
Re:Panic-inspired Dashboard Made From Photo Frame for ~$150....
by durin42 on Saturday March 13, 2010 @01:21PM
(#1189311)
Anyone know of a frame that works like this that can work without some third-party service for publishing? I'd like to do something like this on information that's under a strict NDA.
Re:Panic-inspired Dashboard Made From Photo Frame for ~$150....
by rivo on Saturday March 13, 2010 @02:13PM
(#1189404)
About a year ago, I bought my parents a Phillips digital frame with wireless which (8FF3WMI) could read directly from a feed with no third party software. As long as you don't use the URL anywhere else, no one will be able to find it.
I built a small web interface for it where we can all upload pictures. My family is in different parts of the world so it's nice to send the pictures right into my parents' living room with two mouse clicks.
The frame re-scans the feed about every 10 minutes.
Re:Panic-inspired Dashboard Made From Photo Frame for ~$150....
by roel_v on Saturday March 13, 2010 @02:53PM
(#1189485)
I did something similar with the Philips frame, bought one for my parents and my in-laws and they both have their own dedicated galleries in a self-hosted Gallery2 installation, which allows me and the rest of my family to upload through the web, via email or directly from windows with the 'publish to the web' feature. Works great. Only complaint that I have with this frame is that it reloads every image every time it's shown, rather than caching it. Don't know why, it does cause high bandwidth usage :/
Re:Panic-inspired Dashboard Made From Photo Frame for ~$150....
by patio11 on Saturday March 13, 2010 @01:31PM
(#1189325)
I know of options for that sort of thing (look for "digital signage") but the pricing is not in the same ballpark as a digital photo frame. (In Japan at least, it is sufficiently expensive that I think going the Panic way is probably cheaper if you plan on providing your own programming.)
Re:Panic-inspired Dashboard Made From Photo Frame for ~$150....
by durin42 on Saturday March 13, 2010 @01:41PM
(#1189342)
Yeah, everything I've found thus far it'd make sense to just get a Fit PC and a small LCD - it'd be nice if there was a small frame like this that was hackable (a la the WRT54g) for a small status display.
Re:Panic-inspired Dashboard Made From Photo Frame for ~$150....
by joezydeco on Saturday March 13, 2010 @02:52PM
(#1189482)
Why are we all doing this with RSS feeds?
I want a frame that serves up a samba folder over a wifi network. That's all. I can make a dozen different things that stuff pictures dynamically into that folder, all the frame needs to do is cycle through them.
Re:Panic-inspired Dashboard Made From Photo Frame for ~$150....
by hcho on Saturday March 13, 2010 @02:00PM
(#1189383)
Here's what you can do: draw an image using GD, I don't know if you have GD in Ruby. PHP has it, I am sure you can hack a little script for that. Feed the generated image the photo frame and Bob's your uncle.
Re:Panic-inspired Dashboard Made From Photo Frame for ~$150....
by roamzero on Saturday March 13, 2010 @06:42PM
(#1189892)
Make the chumby into a sleek, passively charged thinclient and you could have something that might compete in the ipad space as a home internet appliance. Make sure you have stuff like a camera, mic, touch screen, accelerometer, decent speakers and you have a lot of possibilities (it sits somewhere and displays a slideshow/clock/widgets, you pick it up and you could take skype calls or video chat directly with another networked device, record something and have it saved on the main pc, etc) The key though would be to make it cheap enough so that you could buy several and network them together in a household/office environment.
Re:Panic-inspired Dashboard Made From Photo Frame for ~$150....
by harisenbon on Saturday March 13, 2010 @08:52PM
(#1190080)
That's interesting.
I just picked up the next version of up that photoframe at sofmap (6000yen, go get one!) and have been trying to figure out what the hell to do with it other than show my wife's facebook pictures.
I do have two questions though: Does the photoframe automatically update the RSS feed each time it runs through so that your stats are always current? I was under the impression that it only reads the RSS feed once on slideshow startup, and then just keeps display the same info over and over (whether or not it keeps the photos in memory I don't know)
Also, have you figured out a way to get your dashboard to startup when you turn the photo-frame on, instead of having to select windows framit from the menu? That's my most cringe-worthy "feature" of the buffalo frame. I'm actually thinking about calling them and getting them to fix that.
Re:Panic-inspired Dashboard Made From Photo Frame for ~$150....
by replicatorblog on Saturday March 13, 2010 @01:59PM
(#1189378)
Have you thought about making something like this a startup? A SaaS metrics dashboard service? I deal with a lot of call centers and marketing houses that do big "competitive" dashboards to motivate/track staff and they have to roll their own systems. I'm sure a bunch of tech groups would like to have a Panic-esqe dashboard, but wouldn't want to go through the hassle of doing it themselves. Not sure if it is a huge market, but could be interesting!
Re:Panic-inspired Dashboard Made From Photo Frame for ~$150....
by patio11 on Saturday March 13, 2010 @02:19PM
(#1189412)
Hardware + per customer customization + sales cycle which requires talking to people = I have no interest in that business at all. But if you want it, go for it.
Re:Panic-inspired Dashboard Made From Photo Frame for ~$150....
by akd on Saturday March 13, 2010 @02:30PM
(#1189432)
It wouldn't necessarily have to involve any of these. Most of these that I've seen have been cobbled together through Excel, so they have the skills to get everything into Excel. You could offer a product that made really pretty charts around these metrics.
The hardware would be just a 720p TV which they would have to buy and mount - you would just sell teh software.
Re:Panic-inspired Dashboard Made From Photo Frame for ~$150....
by replicatorblog on Saturday March 13, 2010 @02:39PM
(#1189454)
What companies? I did a search for "LCD Marketing Dashboard" and didn't come up with anything. Not doubting you, just curious what these would be called!
Re:Panic-inspired Dashboard Made From Photo Frame for ~$150....
by cullenking on Saturday March 13, 2010 @01:54PM
(#1189365)
Zack's been wanting one of these but with analog gauges, and I just hooked him up with an atmega128 complete dev board with LCD. I have been thinking of the design, and will probably be hitting the junkyard for some old car gauges.
But man, car gauges just don't have the same flexibility as an LCD...nice work Patrick!
Patrick, you must have ungodly time management skills.
Note that my budget for BCC is usually five hours a week. I am efficient because I have to be. One tactic is to make email check only Must Be Done task. Now I can get away without actually checking due to frame, for mornings without support email.
And therein lies a lesson in how to make yourself productive.
Edit: looked at the code. Got the answer :)
The long tail indeed...
http://hackaday.com/2009/03/30/psp-as-a-status-monitor/
Been waiting years to say that.
I built a small web interface for it where we can all upload pictures. My family is in different parts of the world so it's nice to send the pictures right into my parents' living room with two mouse clicks.
The frame re-scans the feed about every 10 minutes.
But no, you'll never get anything as cheap as these buffalo monitors.
http://www.thinkgeek.com/computing/usb-gadgets/c609/
Comments suggest you can place any RSS feed into it.
It looks like a good solution
I want a frame that serves up a samba folder over a wifi network. That's all. I can make a dozen different things that stuff pictures dynamically into that folder, all the frame needs to do is cycle through them.
It just ALSO has support for windows frameit, flicker and picasa.
It's a pretty nice piece of hardware.
I do have two questions though: Does the photoframe automatically update the RSS feed each time it runs through so that your stats are always current? I was under the impression that it only reads the RSS feed once on slideshow startup, and then just keeps display the same info over and over (whether or not it keeps the photos in memory I don't know)
Also, have you figured out a way to get your dashboard to startup when you turn the photo-frame on, instead of having to select windows framit from the menu? That's my most cringe-worthy "feature" of the buffalo frame. I'm actually thinking about calling them and getting them to fix that.
The hardware would be just a 720p TV which they would have to buy and mount - you would just sell teh software.
I used to work in kiosk software, sort of a similar area.
It's going to be a pretty large market, but is still in the burgeoning phase (especially in Nagoya)
But man, car gauges just don't have the same flexibility as an LCD...nice work Patrick!
I have a digital photo frame sitting here doing nothing though, might have to give it a shot.