Ryan and Debi Cragun’s Blog

I read on a tech website once about someone converting an old laptop into a digital picture frame and thought it was a cool idea. Well, when we upgraded laptops about a month ago, leaving us with a working but very old laptop lying around gathering dust, I thought it might be time to give the project a try. I briefly considered selling the laptop on Ebay, but when I saw the going price for an identical laptop (around $20), I decided it was worth more to me as a digital picture display.

So, with the thought in my mind that I’d like to give this a try, I started looking around for guides and advice. One of the first websites I found was this one that links to a bunch of documented projects like mine. I perused a few of the projects and found some I liked and some I thought were really, really sad. I let the idea percolate inside my head for a day or so then started discussing options with my wife. She, of course, insisted that it not look like the really sad ones, which I wouldn’t go for anyway, but otherwise was fine with the idea. Eventually I settled on a course of action, which is detailed below. I liked this approach because it did not entail tearing the laptop apart and would ultimately result in what I thought would be a nice picture frame (I was right).

What You’ll Need:

• an old, unused but working laptop your willing to hang on a wall - I used an HP XH136
• a wireless card
• VNC software (like UltraVNC) for controlling the laptop
• a shadowbox frame - we used an 18″ height X 24″ width X 3″ depth frame
• matting that fits your laptop screen and covers the rest of the shadowbox frame - we went with an 8″ height X 10″ width mat
• a sturdy screw or wall mount to mount the shadowbox once complete - I’m estimating that mine weighs around 15 pounds
• a variety of tools: scissors, screwdrivers, possibly a drill (I used one for mounting the frame)
• some velcro or other means of mounting the laptop in place inside the shadowbox

The Process:
Before you start building the frame you need to make sure your laptop has all of the software on it you’ll need. That means an operating system (of course), plus, ideally, a VNC program that allows you to control it remotely. You should also test the wireless card and VNC before you start building the frame just to make sure everything works - no sense putting it inside a frame if it doesn’t work. Once the software is in place, you can add and remove pictures whenever you want. So, on to the frame…

1. The first step is to remove your laptop monitor from the laptop base. This usually entails uncovering the hinges where it screws on and unscrewing the bolts holding it in place, as the pictures below illustrate:

Here’s a view of the panel on my laptop I had to remove. To take it off I had to remove two screws (on the reverse of the hinges) then pop it up.

This shows the laptop with the panel removed.

Here’s a close up of the hinge with one of the screws removed.

And here’s the monitor unscrewed from the hinges.

2. The next step was to swivel the monitor around to see how much play I had in the cable that connects it to the computer. I needed to see if I could turn the monitor over and lay it flat on the laptop base as that was how I was planning on situating it inside the shadowbox. You can basically think of this like flipping around a tablet PC to use the monitor as a writing pad. Here’s how my monitor ultimately laid on the laptop base:

As you can see, the monitor, when swiveled around, is offset from the base. Because of the offset I had to get a larger shadowbox then would have been ideal so the monitor would be centered inside the frame. Also, you can see the two sets of cables that run from the laptop base into the monitor. I’ve replaced the panel I removed in this photo as I ultimately used the switch on that panel to start the computer.

3. With the panel swiveled around you can get a measure of how wide your shadowbox needs to be. I had already done this before purchasing the shadowbox so I knew how much space I needed. The next step is to prepare your shadowbox. My wife did this part. Using posterboard and a mat, she covered the inside of the glass with the posterboard and mat, situating the mat perfectly center from the top, bottom, and sides:

Here’s the shadowbox with the back cover removed (I was working on it while my wife did the matting).

Here’s the mat we bought for the center of the frame. It’s 11″ X 14″ from the outside edges; the display area is 8″ X 10″.

Here’s the inside of the shadowbox looking toward the front with the matting completed. She used scotch tape to secure the matting.

And here’s the front of the shadowbox with the matting in place.

4. The next step is to situate the computer on the back of the shadowbox. This was the hardest part for me as I wanted to make sure it was perfectly centered inside the mat yet stable so the computer wouldn’t shift inside the frame. I ultimately used several approaches to secure the laptop.

4a. The first thing I used to secure the laptop was velcro. The back of the shadowbox we bought (and we hadn’t planned on this, but it was nice) came with a velcro compatible soft backing and a piece of sticky velcro that you could glue to whatever you wanted to mount. I cut the velcro into four pieces and mounted them on the bottom of the laptop:

You can see the four pieces of velcro attached to the computer.

4b. The velcro isn’t strong enough to hold the laptop perfectly in place but it keeps it where you position it while you are working on the other methods of locking the laptop into place. The second thing I used to lock the laptop into place where a couple of plastic cassette cases. I was looking around for something sturdy but light that could sit between the laptop and the bottom of the shadowbox to keep it from shifting down. I happened to have a couple of cassette cases laying around from a different project and they were the perfect size, so I grabbed them and positioned them as shown in the picture:

4c. The above picture also shows the other method I used to situate the laptop - nylon twine. I was really wracking my brain for something light to keep the laptop in place when I struck on the idea of twine. I tied a piece around the laptop base like you would a wrapped package then tied a couple pieces of twine to it and wrapped them up and around the base. The twine is thin enough that it can sneak out of the backing when it is in place inside the shadowbox frame. So, with a couple wraps of the twine the and a couple of cassette tapes ensuring it wouldn’t fall, the laptop was locked into place. I also used some velcro to attach the power supply to the backing as shown in the above picture (upper right).

5. The next big problem was one I worried about for a while - how do I turn this thing on and off? Of course, if you plan on leaving your digital picture frame on all the time this isn’t a problem, but I didn’t want to use up the energy so I needed a plan for turning it on and off when I wanted it to display photos. I considered WAKE ON LAN, but the wireless card I have for my laptop doesn’t have that functionality (though some cards do, which you may consider if this is an issue for you). I lucked out in that the power switch on this laptop slides to the right (in the above picture) to turn it on. And if you ever need to do a “hard” reset, you just pull the power switch to the right and hold it for five seconds and the laptop shuts off. This gave me an idea. Why not just glue a piece of that same twine to the power switch using hot glue (which is easily removed) and run it out through the back of the shadowbox. That way when I want to turn on the laptop all I have to do is pull on the string and voila - it’s on. A couple dabs of hot glue later and I had a power switch that would run outside the frame:

Here’s the best photo I could get of the power switch. If you look close you can see the edge of the switch. The twine is glued to it with hot glue.

6. With the laptop locked into place on the backing and the power switch taken care of, I only had a couple more things to do. First, I cut a couple of very small (1/4 inch) chunks out of the backing in strategic locations. One in the bottom right left corner (if looking at it from the back; bottom right from the front) for the power cord to run to a nearby outlet. The other one is about 6 inches above that one and is for the twine that turns the laptop on. I then found a stud (board, not a guy) in the wall using a nifty little stud finder and screwed a particularly sturdy screw into the stud, ensuring that my newly created digital picture frame would not fall. I then lined everything up inside with the mat on the outside and closed up the shadowbox:

This is my initial test of the frame. You can see some of the yellow twine pull cord on the right as well as the black power cord. I hadn’t bought the white extension cord yet and the yellow pull cord eventually was hidden. This was also before I mounted it on the wall. Even so, it looks nice.

7. Because we have white walls in our place, I didn’t want the black cord from the laptop hanging down the wall. I made my final purchase for the project to address this - a $4.00 white extension cord. I ran that into the back of the picture frame and then hung the frame on the wall. A quick tug on my power pull cord and I was running:

Here’s the frame up close. The picture was beginning to transition in this shot so it looks a little dark. You can see the white power cord sneaking out of the bottom right side of the frame.

Here’s the frame on the wall where we mounted it. You can barely see the white cord from this far away.

Conclusion:
So, on to the burning questions. How much did it cost me? The shadowbox was $49.99 at Michael’s; the mat was $5.99; the extension cord was $4.00. With tax (and if you estimate for the twine and such), the total was about $65.00. Of course, that doesn’t include the laptop (which I paid about $600 for about 6 years ago), but considering it is only worth about $20.00 these days, I’m not including it in the price. Besides, I wouldn’t have taken on the project if I didn’t have the extra laptop just laying around. Compare my price with these.

What about time? I estimate 5 hours of time, combining both my time and my wife’s.

I think it turned out quite nice. I finished it up while my wife was at work yesterday and turned it on so she would see it when she came in. She was amazed. It looks really good and is quite a cool display. I set the pictures to change every 20 seconds or so and just use the Windows screensaver that draws pictures from a folder randomly. I figure we’ll turn it on when we have company over or when we’re home on the weekends and holidays.

Oh, and my favorite part - I can take the laptop out at any point and it will still work as a laptop - it wasn’t destroyed in the process.