Digital Picture Frames

[tmbrown97]

Hey guys,

This isn't really HA, but it's in the realm of something a lot of us play with. I'm trying to help out someone I know on coming up with a solution... The cliff-notes version of the project is this: We're looking for a solution that'll let this person manage his library of over 10,000 large digital pictures (10MP, high quality taken with a DSLR) and now he's getting into video. He likes to see his pictures - he likes them on a digital picture frame showing throughout his office (on a picture frame that plays 24x7); and at his home. He's expressed an interest in sharing some of these with his mother as well, by putting a digital picture frame in her house as well. This means synchronizing very large collections of pictures across a WAN without killing bandwidth.


There are some basics about this individual:

1. He's got the money to spend if he has to (he wants something simple and reliable); but, he's cheap at the same time.
2. He has zero patience for missteps; it has to work once delivered
3. He has zero technical ability (he doesn't know how to copy pictures from an SD card to his computer)
4. He has lots of pictures (over 10,000) taken with a 10MP DSLR; and is now getting into digital video. Right now, we're at 107GB without adding video

Today, this is managed through a couple photo frames from www.photovu.com - these are awesome frames - they look great, but they don't support video, and the company has shut their doors, so I can't get them any more. Today we manually synchronize his photos from his house to the office. I've been looking at getting a HP MediaSmart Windows Home Server in his house and using Windows Live Sync to synchronize with the office (perhaps on another WHS) but this isn't fully implemented yet. I also have been working on setting up some Eye-Fi cards for him (www.eye.fi) to help take the copying of pictures out of his hands. They have an awesome product that'll do an "endless memory card" - meaning it'll pull the pictures off his card automatically when it can get on a wireless network that it knows and automatically transfer them to one of his PC's, and/or to different photo sharing sites.

He described a scenario today that he wants to do:

1. In his livingroom, he wants to put in 3 flat-panel TV's that span the wall; he wants to be able to have one of them showing TV, one showing his home videos just playing throguh, and one showing his pictures streaming through.
2. He'd like the flexibility to press a button, or maybe a little touchpad or something - then span the screens, or change the configuration (maybe all off, all random pictures/videos, etc). Maybe a crestron touchpad or something? It'd be nice if he could press the same system and go to his bluray player, or other video sources as well; he has trouble operating all these systems.
3. He'd like to be able to hang another screen on his kitchen wall (think super-slim Samsung LED TV on the wall) playing through video/pictures - without sound most of the time.
4. He'd like to have a similar solution at his office; probably not the three screens, but maybe a couple on his wall of his office professionally mounted.
5. He'd like to be able to put in a stripped down version of a table-top display at his mom's house; not playing everything though - just selected pictures. (I'm thinking a simpler frame that can pull from picasa online, or something like that - just the pictures he flags).
6. We need some reliability in here somewhere for backing up his pictures; whether it's a scheduled backup, online, etc.
7. We're completely willing to buy a few PC's; I'm just worried about some of the wiring aspects, but I have most of that covered.
8. The pictures/videos must stay in their highest quality; he'd like to have his pictures go to a screen possibly 52" at 1920x1080 and have them still look good.
9. I personally like Picasa for managing pictures (moving them into folders, naming them, etc) - but I don't know how well it'll synchronize across PC's.

He has said he's ok with showing all pictures at his home and office, but his wife has asked for more control; so while we synchronize his entire library, she'd like to be able to actively scan through the library on occasion and de-select the pictures that are blurry, don't make her look good, or that would embarass anyone in the family. By default, all would display - but there should be a way they can easily manage this library from any PC (wife uses a mac, he uses a PC).

While we want to keep this cheaper if possible, realibility is more important than cost. It needs to work 100% of the time. I'm open to buying servers, some dedicated PC's, etc. I can get dedicated bandwidth if needed.

And, I can't take on any software development. I can do some GUI config on a WYSIWYG editor or something like that; but I can't take on weeks of coding. This is just on the side. If we can find someone who specializes in this type of stuff, we're open to hiring them. We'll also need to hire someone to convert all his old tape-based video to a digital format as well.

Thx guys! Anything you can possibly think of would help - I'm really looking for a high-end solution here that's pretty much zero maintenance... If you have more questions, fire away!

 

[pete_c]

This company tried (not sure if they failed though) creating a multimedia frame for advertising purposes only. I'm not sure if it took off though. I have one of their frames (8" only) and its very industrial looking.

Realease

You could also just use an LCD with a picopc and some custom software to achieve what you want. I ripped apart my old 26" HP widescreen to do just that. Its sitting right now though as a project to be. I can kind of do this now the the $50 (with MIR) PBO's I've been playing with. (does more - video , pictures, RSS, music etc). The actual board inside the box is only about 5" X 5 ". I've been able to "tweak" the OS by using symbolic links to a USB dongle.

 

[rismoney]

I think you need to iron out this from a much lower level, since you have many components you want to address.


On the sync side - the key to synchronizing larger data sets, is identifying really what you want to sync.
You want 107GB everywhere but you dont need to synchronize 107GB, but maybe under 10GB.

Organize the collection by date the picture was taken. This is available metadata, and you can do this right in Windows Explorer.
Then put each year and month into folders. I do it like this
2004
2005
2006
2006
Mom Bday
Valentines Day
3-1
3-22
Party
2007
etc.

Then you only need to sync a small data set 2010, since only the most recent year or even month changes.

Compound this with something that only does deltas, and you have something much more efficient.
Synchronize with a filter on only jpgs, and rename files you won't want displayed - addresses the blurry photo images.

Using one computer for 3 screens is definitely possible with a quad video card or something, but in your situation may be difficult to manage all 3 simultaneously. Because you can only physically interact with one of them at a time (one mouse pointer).
3 small computers can become 3 HDMI sources on 3 screens but with administrative and power overhead.

break everything down...

 

[tmbrown97]

rismoney - Thx - the synchronization hasn't been too bad so far - I've used Windows Live Sync - and it's quite good at syncing very large libraries over the WAN, since it only transfers what's changed. I used to use it to synchronize a 100gb MP3 library between two of my PC's in two different locations - and it handled it amazingly well (I had to break into smaller folders as it could only have 5,000 files per folder, or something like that).