To get the camera acting as a motion detector for the photo frame I had to string a few apps together. The Nexus comes with a front facing camera, which I wanted to use as a proximity sensor to turn the display on and off depending on traffic walking by the frame. The 8mm video I recorded would use this real estate though. Most of the pictures I scanned are all 4:3 either horizontal or vertical, so most of the screen wouldn’t be used when displaying an image on a widescreen display. Even though they were several years old they would be more than powerful enough to handle displaying simple pictures. The Fire has a resolution of 1024×600 at 169 dpi while the Nexus has 1280×800 at 216 dpi.
I planned on stripping the device down out of it’s casing and place it into a thick picture frame instead of a larger shadow box. I purchased a used Kindle Fire (first generation) and a Kindle Fire HD 7″ (second generation) and a used Nexus 7 (first generation) for some testing. I thought to myself, “Matt, why don’t you use a device that already has the LCD and computer built in together, like a tablet!” I originally looked into taking an old LCD monitor attached to a Raspberry Pi and placed into a shadow box, but the price quickly ballooned once all the pieces were tallied. The tinkerer inside me knew I would be able to find a better way before Christmas. I decided I would venture a DIY route for these gifts. 800×600 resolution made me cringe as all of my scanned photos were large enough for poster size prints.
Some of the top search results on Amazon were products accused of buying all of their 5 star reviews. All sites were filled with poorly built or functioning frames. Pursuing online vendors left me wanting more. I have over 6,000 new photos I’d like to put into some digital picture frames. This process was not simply to restore and preserve past memories but to turn into gifts for the Christmas season. In previous posts I had been digitizing old family photos.
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