"Digital picture frames, nano-itx-boards or Ipod-video?"

Hi,

Option 3 attracts me as well. Expensive, yes.

On the other hand: the digital picture frame-cost (50 per pop) is also excluding screens. The Epia-board on the other hands needs to be complemented with RAM and at least a hard drive.

EpiOS with OpenChrome and MPlayer or Xine would be a viable way to go. I´d like to investigate that option!

There are 2.5 inch solid state drives up to 8 GB that can be plugged in directly into the Epia board and together with the pico-PSU-power adapter it is possible to make a PC-video player with no loose or spinning parts at all. We allready have a setup with a nano-itx-board and solid state drive in our posession, that I haven't had the time to work with yet.

This setup will of course be included in the work material for the workshop.

/Robert

Tim Boykett wrote:

hi all,

option 3 attracts me: having said that 2400 USD for the SDK played off against the cost of the nanoboards might not be so good: SDK plus 10 pieces: 2400+10*50 a bit under 3000 USD, about 2000 Euro this week the nanoboards cost around 300 Euro per piece, not including screens.

On the other hand the nanoboards have TFT and VGA output plus HD video. I am not sure how separate these all are, whether it is possible to have one, two or three sets of independent moving images coming from the boards.

hmmm, look at the last four paragraphs of this: http://www.itreviews.co.uk/hardware/h905.htm software wise there might be few problems, but .

however that said, it might be relatively easy to do e.g. PureData on the nano and have very tight control of video. Hmm. My thoughts right now... # tim

On 18/12/2007, at 3:57 PM, Robert Brecevic wrote:

Hi all!

Yes, I am also very keen on the photoframe SDK, it costs $2395 and they claim that each PCB cost is down at 50 dollars after having done the prototyping using the SDK (see http://www.mds.com/products/ProductPages/DPF200-KIT/DPF_rev_1b.pdf - for a more full product spec).

Ipod-video is interesting as well. I don't see any reason why we couldn't try both. The trouble with ipod, I guess, is that output formats will be limited to the actual display contained within the player - as I have seen in the actual hardware there are no additional connectors for external screens.

A third option is to use small nano-itx-boards - they are complete PC:s with PCI-extension options and onboard hardware mpeg-decoder. In combination with an embedded OS (xp embedded + Directshow or Linux embedded + ?? for video functionality) they could work as smart video server&client-nodes.

greetings

Robert

Andreas Mayrhofer wrote:

Hi Robert, Hi Geska,

(.) we have ongoing discussions on different issues that might be interesting for the workshop in Sweden. (.) We are looking for ways to make photo frames usable within our conceptions. cool if there is a knowledge-base for that on spot. by the way how much costs the devolopers kit? The SDK option sounds very interesting to us too, so we are looking forward to its release. As i have no experience concerning the iPod-Video I´d be interested whether this works solid. for instance is the format suitable for bigger screens? would the iphone even be a better solution and do you know whether there are other products that offer pretty the same features?

greetings, Andi

Am 15.12.2007 um 12:25 schrieb Robert Brecevic:

Hi Tim, hi Ante We are thinking along the same line. I have been targeting these guys: http://www.mds.com/products/product.asp?prod=DPF200%2DKITsince they provide an entire development suite for DPF:s. What do you think about these ones? The only problem is that the developerskit is quite expensive.

Ipod touch on the other hand is a remarkably slick platform for creating "video tiles". The SDK is said to come out in February.

"The SDK will arrive, for iPhone and iPod touch (!), in February 2008 after MacWorld San Francisco. Apple "[is] excited about creating a vibrant third party developer community around the iPhone and enabling hundreds of new applications for our users," but they are taking the time to do it properly "because we're trying to do two diametrically opposed things at once - provide an advanced and open platform to developers while at the same time protect iPhone users from viruses, malware, privacy attacks, etc.""

Until the SDK is released I guess it can be a bit tricky to develop some new applications, software-wise, although hardware hacking might be feasible, changing input signals and similar.

The third option is of course to work around a possible setup, where the Photo frames just act as "dumb" wireless picture recievers from microcontroller+PC-node(s) that act as the input and logic handlers as well as source servers.

We don't have an enormous budget, so all contributions with materials are welcome. This is exactly the kind of topics we intend develop and research.

Reagarding the digital photoframes, Bengt Sjölen, who is participating in the workshop has been looking into these last year, so there is some ground work done to take this further during the workshop as well. I also remember you asked if someone would be doing anything "on the streets" during the workshop, and Michelle Teran will probably be planning an intervention during the workshop.

best, Robert

andreas@timesup.org wrote:

Hi, Hi, we talked about these too as i remember. another thing was the idea about the i-pod as kind of derivat for a "huge" video player/machine. as i have no experience in hacking an i-pod i wanted to know whether you Robert had any time and interest to make progress on this topic?

we have financial capacities to buy a few if there is need for the workshop.

cheers, Andi

Zitat von Tim Boykett:

Hi Ante, Hi Robert,

is this the sort of thing that might be useful.
http://www.thinkgeek.com/electronics/cameras/94a5/

tim