Here’s an eye test for you—can you spot my old laptop computer in this picture? 

I don’t often get to post project write-ups here on the main blog of Boyink.com - usually my garage creations are more geared towards the Jeep crowd that reads the SSDutch Blog, but in this case the end result is definitely more tech-oriented.

For about $30 I was able to transform an old laptop gathering dust on the shelf into the digital picture frame (or “DPF” for those if you who enjoy TLAs...) sitting on the right end of the mantle.

Now this certainly isn’t an original idea - if you nose around the web a bit you’ll find sites like this that link to dozens of such projects.

In my case the laptop is a Compaq Presario 2100 with what I suspect is a motherboard issue with the PCMCIA slot—the system locks up when trying to use it with a Wi-Fi card.  While a wireless connection would have been nice, since we intended to place the frame on the mantle of our faux fireplace running a network wire to it won’t be a huge deal.

So here’s the basic build process.  After pulling apart the laptop lid to free the LCD screen for measurements, I bought a shadowbox from Michaels and had them make a custom matte to fit the size of the LCD screen into it.  Note that I didn’t actually use the slide out cardboard “box” that came with the shadowbox frame.

I also bought a piece of foam core - and to support the LCD screen in the frame I cut down a piece to fit inside the shadowbox frame, then cut out a hole just the size of the LCD.  Note that I also had to lengthen two wires to the power supply lines for the LCD backlight.

I flipped the shadowbox over, put the glass in, then the matte, then the foam core/LCD screen.  I duct-taped around the edges of the foam-core to hold this all in place.

Then to prevent the laptop from leaning against the LCD (and for a bit of air space behind the laptop), I used some standard plumbers pipe hanger strap:

Next I loaded the laptop, and secured it in place with more of the pipe hanger, attaching to where the hinges for the lid were. 

The shadowbox was big enough that I could also fit in the power supply pack, zip-tied to the pipe hanger.

For a back I used another piece of foam core, with a rectangular hole cut out for ventilation.  I duct taped a piece of window screen over the vent hole:

The tabs provided on the frame work to hold the foam core in place:

Once in place, I can use VNC to remote-control the laptop.

At the moment I’m using Irfanview for the slideshows with it set to change every 15 minutes.  Irfranview requires you to build a list of the images you want in the slideshow however, and I’d prefer something that just watches a specific directory on the network and plays any image found in that directory.

It’s been on the mantle for a day, and so far we’re really enjoying it.  It’s nice to see all those digital pictures that we have but rarely look at.  Definitely worth the $30 investment and a couple hours at the workbench.