The fine folks at FrameChannel have shared with me (and granted permission to share with you) the ‘FrameChannel Certification Checklist’.
This document details basic operation of a FC compliant device (photo frame). It specifies the request made by the frame of the service and how the frame should display the images contained in the RSS feed provided by FrameChannel.
A copy of the PDF document is available here: FrameChannel Certification Checklist v20
And it was going to be such a nice day…
I received this rather sad message this morning:
FrameChannel Users –
Due to challenges with the economy and our company’s financial situation we’ve been forced to make a tough decision and will be shutting down the FrameChannel service this month.
We have provided a mechanism for you to download any of your photos that are hosted with us in the My Photos channel or that have been emailed to your device via the My Friend’s Photos feature.
You may log into your account at www.framechannel.com to download your photos, but the service will soon stop delivering content to your devices. To download your photos, log into your FrameChannel account, click the Download My Photos tab, and follow the instructions there.
For those of you using your devices for commercial applications, you may wish to take a look at the SignChannel service. That service is owned an operated by Scala, Inc., a worldwide leader in digital signage. For more information, please visit www.signchannel.com or email info@signchannel.com
We thank you for your support of the FrameChannel service.
-The FrameChannel Team
I’m the proud owner of a Kodak EasyShare W820 WiFi enabled digital photo frame for several years. One of it’s most compelling features was the intergration with FrameChannel. FrameChannel is (was) an online service that allows(ed) you to manage what was displayed on the photoframe. It provided several pre-packaged feeds for weather displays, stock information, news, traffic conditions, Facebook photos, Twitter and most importantly for me, Flickr integration.
My frame would automatically download the latest additions to my Flickr photostream and display them. This was a GREAT feature and very popular among my family and house guests.
It has always been a free service (albeit with the occasional ad for FrameChannel services on other platforms); I assumed that Kodak had paid them a fee per frame to operate the service. I could make a lot of guesses about the terms of such an agreement but I’ll leave that for another day.
One thing I don’t yet grasp is why I wasn’t offered the option to pay for the service? Is shutdown the only option?
I’m searching for a contact within Thinking Screen Media (operators of FrameChannel) to propose that they open-source the software that runs the service. This would allow other to build/operate replacements so that their frames will not go dark. If you, dear read, should know anyone within the company, please drop me a line.
In the meantime… Break out WireShark!
As some of you will know WireShark is a fantastic tool for analyzing network (LAN) data. It will capture and decode the data as it flies by allow one to see exactly what is going on. In this case, it is useful for determining the protocol used by the frame to communicate with FrameChannel. With this information in hand it should be possible to create a work-alike backend so that I may continue to enjoy my WiFi enabled photo frame.
I’ll post what I discover along the way.
I found myself needing to change the administrator’s password on my Windows XP machine today. I’ve used that account exactly twice; once to setup the machine and then to create the user account that I use every day. So no, I don’t remember the absurdly complex password I came up with 3 years ago when I built this machine.
Luckily, I’ve ignored my own advice and have granted admin privileges to my user account. Only users with admin privileges can change other users’ passwords. This method will also work to change your own password even if you don’t have admin privileges.
C:\net user administrator * Type a password for the user: asifiwouldtellyou Retype the password to confirm: asifiwouldtellyou The command completed successfully.
You can also change it without being prompted (useful in scripts):
C:\net user administrator thenewpasswordgoeshere The command completed successfully.
In the first part of this series I explained how to build and configure the Music Player Daemon (MPD) for use with Live365. In this installment I’ll describe how to send the song metadata (Title, Artist, Album). This is a requirement for ‘live’ mode broadcasters; if you do not send this data your station will not be listed in the directory.
When you run a Live365 station in ‘basic’ mode they pull the song metadata directly from the ID3 tags in your MP3 files. Most MP3 streams include this info. within the stream itself so that it can be displayed by the player software. Live365 does not extract this data from the stream you feed to them. Live365 provides an API (application program interface) that allows you to feed the data to them separate from the music stream.
Continue reading Build a Live365 station using Linux – Part 2 (Song Data)
I’ve run Dreamland Blues Radio, a streaming internet radio station, since 1997. In the beginning I used WinAmp + Shoutcast streaming server on a Windows 95 machine. As the station grew in popularity and my then boss began to notice the bandwidth utilization of the R&D lab outside business hours (rats!) I came to the realization that I needed a more stable and scalable platform; enter Live365.
Of course, back then it wasn’t called Live365 (bonus points for anyone who can tell me the original name) but I was invited to preview the beta of the service – I jumped at it. The original setup continued to use WinAmp with the Shoutcast plug-in but the feed was then sent to Live365 for audience distribution; what is now called a ‘Live’ stream.
Continue reading Build a Live365 station using Linux – Part 1
Today I’ve updated much of the software that runs the site; fingers crossed that I haven’t broken anything.