Geek innovation. LCD Picture Frame made from an old laptop.

A message board I frequent had a user who didn’t want to spend $200+ on a simple LCD picture frame (rightfully so). So, he took it upon himself to make one. He stripped on old laptop and proceeded to make his own.

We’ve wanted an LCD photo frame for a while, but thought it was ridiculous to pay $200+ for a nice one that had a tiny 7″ screen. I wanted one with wifi so i could easily upload new pics to it if possible.

Then I thought about using an old POS sony laptop i had lying around. I disassembled the screen from the unit, and bought a deep picture frame from some craft store, along with a pre-cut mat and some foam core.

i cut a hole the size of the “naked” LCD in the center of the foam core so it would hold the LCD flush against the back of the photo mat. i then basically wedged the rest of the laptop in there with some other pieces of foam core.

the cool part is that it uses a screen saver called “Slickr” ( http://cellardoorsw.com/slickr/ ) to automatically login to my Flickr.com account and look for any pics with a tag that says “frame”. It downloads those pics & automatically displays them. I can RDC into the laptop from my desktop if needed, or i can just plug in a usb mouse & keyboard too.

Works VERY slick, is HUGE (14″ screen, IIRC), and cost me a whopping $35 at the craft store. You can find laptops for cheap on ebay and do the same thing. You just have to have a flickr account to auto-update the pics if you want to do that. Otherwise, just copy pics to it over your network.

Pictures after the fold.