I've already built a 'macquarium' and was looking for a new project, when an
article in the August issue of Macworld (see below link) gave me the inspiration for this
project. While their picture frame was nice, I thought I could take it a little
further and make it a little more useful. I have an Airport Express hooked up to my home theater, and it's great for
what it is, but I didn't really like having to go into the other room to control my music.
I had checked out Roku's Soundbridge, and Slim Devices Squeezebox, and realized with Itunes built-in sharing capabilities, I could end up with more than just a
picture frame, but also a music server for not much more dough. It took about a month to find a bargain on a Powerbook G3 on ebay so I could get started. At Aaron Bros. I found an 11x14 shadow box frame that I could adapt to hold the guts. It was actually cheaper (and easier) than building the box from scratch. It has finger joints too, so it's very strong. I also found an 11x14 frame with a fairly wide border to attach to the shadow box and hold the matte and screen. I installed a
wireless card so that I can upload pictures remotely and share music using
iTunes. It's still a fully functioning mac, so I can also use it to surf the web and check email. (not that I have, but I can) A shareware program called "Mouseki" allows me to 'type' on a virtual 'keyboard' using the mouse.
The actual fabrication probably took 4 or 5 hours, but I think I took 10-15 trying to get OS X to work properly. The pram battery was dead and I found that it wouldn't boot into OS X once power had been removed. I would have to insert a boot cd that would allow me to change the startup disk. It took a while to figure this out. At first I thought I had a bad drive, and kept running diagnostics and finding only minor errors. I also had several crashes while trying to update software, and had to go through the whole process several times. Now that it's installed and working it seems to be extremely stable. But it took some work to get to that point. I also struggled to get the wireless card to work using freeware drivers. When I finally relented and used ioxperts $20 shareware driver, I had no problems.
Materials:
Powerbook G3 Wallstreet 266mhz w/192mb on ebay
Orinoco wireless card from Overstock
Wireless Card Driver from ioxperts
PRAM Battery (the one that came with it was dead)
11x14" Matte
11x14"x 2" deep shadowbox frame
11x14" picture frame
2 foam covered steel clothes hangers
2 switches
Mouseki - shareware program
misc. screws, wire, solder, electrical tape, hot glue
Total for everything came out to less than $300. I could've saved some money by buying a cheaper frame (the most expensive item other than the powerbook) but I like the look of this one. And the dead pram battery wasn't foreseeable, but I could just as easily have had a dead hard drive.
Some details on it's construction:
Here are the innards. I removed and discarded the keyboard, trackpad, modem, battery, top half of the case. I used the existing holes for the case screws to attach the case to a piece of 3/16" paneling/plywood. I relocated the speakers. I had thought about placing them in the top corners of the frame, or discarding them altogether, but decided to keep them for troubleshooting so I could hear the startup chime. I relocated the pram battery to the bottom of the case. Using a dremel tool I cut out and relocated the control buttons (power, brightness, volume) that used to be above the keyboard, so they could be accessed from the back of the frame. Everything loose I fastened using electrical tape or the hot glue gun.
On the lower right is an Orinoco Gold wireless card. On the upper left is the cd drive.
close-up of the speakers, buttons, pram battery. All attached with hot glue.
Control buttons on back. Frame and back panel I sprayed with a flat black paint.
Shadow-box frame with holes for audio jack, power, ethernet, adb, s-video out, and cooling holes on top and bottom.
Detail showing cut-out to allow cd tray to open
Larger front/outer frame with lcd screen. Removed screen from bezel and back, discarded hinges, microphone, etc. Matte hot-glued to frame. Then screen hot-glued to matte. Unfortunately I had to do this twice. I used canned air to get rid of some sawdust. When I turned the frame over it had ended up between the glass and the screen. Oops! The two connectors for the screen (at the end of the orange ribbons) simply plug in at the bottom of the frame.
Assembled. Screws through back and shadow-box frame into front frame.
In place, with stand made of two foam covered clothes hangers I found and cut and bent to shape. Mouse connection,
audio out and power cables. Y-adapter for adb allows easy connection of keyboard when needed.
After using it for a month, I found the original buttons I had relocated to the back hard to access. Also, on occasion the backlight will not come on. (OS X problem?) Pushing the 'brightness' button once solves this. So I added a couple switches to relocate the power and brightness buttons on top, but still concealed. The back controls are now inactive.
Also note holes to vent heat.
CD drive still completely usable.
Running Itunes. Full control and access to my mx library which resides on a firewire
drive connected to my g5 in my office. Playlists must be created on the g5, or I can use 'browse' to select individual artists or genres. Or using 'Mouseki' I can search.
It also can stream internet radio.
As a picture frame. Mouse tucks neatly behind.
Other mods still planned?
Overall I'm happy with how it turned out. Originally I had planned on letting the pictures cross-fade and zoom, but with OS X running, it doesn't seem to have enough horsepower or memory to do this smoothly. So the pictures are static and it just cuts to the next one.
Also, I was hoping to use the s-video out to hook up to my home theater, but mirroring isn't possible on this model.
If I did it again, I'd go to a framing place and have them cut the matte. It didn't turn out too bad, and it may just be me being too picky, but it's not quite as clean, (especially in the corners) and also not beveled in the way a good matte cutter can do.
I'd still like to figure out how to get the backlight to always come on. Perhaps applescript? Or 10.3? (I'm still running 10.2, since I only have dvd's of 10.3. I don't want to spring for the cd's until I know it will work and not cause more problems)
Also, I have no way to automatically turn it on. I can set it to turn off automatically but not turn on at a preset time. I don't know if this is a problem with OS X on this old of a powerbook or if it would work running OS 8 or 9.
I'd like to be able to control it with my a/v remote. But I believe I'd have to add usb, as there doesn't seem to be any adb based remote units available.
Any questions or comments?
email me at: stevesiframe@pacbell.net
