Yes, I know the quality of the image on the left is quite poor — I’m just so excited!

I received Ian’s Toshiba DMF102X frame today and immediatly set upon getting it working on FrameAlbum.  I had made some changes earlier in the day to the feed format in the hopes of resolving the dreaded ‘File format is not supported’/’Cannot connect to service’ messages many of you with Toshiba frames have experienced.

I fired up Ian’s frame, entered in the static IP information along with the custom FrameAlbum DNS server and selected the ‘FrameChannel mode’.  A few nerve wracking seconds later the green “FrameChannel have ceased operation” image — Yippie!  This means that the frame was talking to FrameAlbum and the frame had understood it’s reply.

I then added Ian’s frame to my FrameAlbum account (using the frameID information contained in the green ‘ceased operation’ image) and added on of my Flickr channels to it.

I restarted the frame and…  WooHoo!

If any of you are having trouble seeing your photos on a Toshiba frame let me know in the comments below and I’ll get it fixed.

Update:

It appears that frames with software version 2.01 are working fine; the ‘newer’ version 2.05, not so much.  I’ve identified and repaired a potential issues; testing ensues.

I’ve added a new feature to the PicasaWeb channel type today.  The system will now generate an text-based image that will be included in your feed under certain circumstances.

If the system is unable to find a PicasaWeb user that matches the name you entered on your channel you will see an image that looks like this:

If there are no public images in your PicasaWeb account you will see an image similar to this:

If you see either of these two warning images on your frame please verify that your PicasaWeb channel is configured correctly, specifically that the username field contains either the email address you used when registering for PicasaWeb, or, the really big integer number that is a shortcut to your account (most people will not know this value)

I will be adding this functionality to the Flickr feeds in the next day or so.

As always, if this is confusing or doesn’t work as you expect drop a comment below.

I’m having a hard time getting FrameAlbum to play nice with Toshiba frames.  It’s bad enough that they lack a custom RSS feed function but even the FrameChannel mode is not working the same as my Kodak frames.  Toshiba frames use an older version of the FC protocol that was not released and despite several nuggets I’ve received from ‘people close to the situation’, and lots of help from you fine folks, I’ve not yet been 100% successful.

It was rather easy to get support for Kodak frames working; I have one and was able to see immediately if something I built was working.  I don’t have that luxury with Toshiba frames.  Which leads me to ask…

Would someone please lend me a Toshiba frame for development and testing?

I will, of course, return it to you at my expense when I an finished.  Ping me on any of the normal channels if you can help.

Thanks in advance.

Update: Many thanks to Ian in SC for the loan of his Toshiba frame!  I’m anxious to get your photos on these frames.

I resolved an issue with outgoing email that caused many of the registration invites to get stuck in a quagmire of email queues, delivery failures and failures to deliver the delivery failure messages.  (Yes, it makes my brain hurt too.)

I’ve resent as many of the failed messages as I could identify.  Have another look in your inbox (and spam folder please) for an invite from FrameAlbum.

If this batch goes through without incident (OK, so far!) I’ll release another batch later tonight.

Thanks for your patience!

Based on feedback I received to yesterday’s post I spent a few hours yesterday re-writing the PicasaWeb feed grabber.  This new version pulls all public images in your PicasaWeb account regardless of the name of the album.  I think this better matches folks expectation of how it should work and puts it into parity with the Flickr photostream grabber.

I also added a feature that converts HTTPS links to standard HTTP.  I’ve found that some frames do not support HTTPS and therefore were not displaying PicasaWeb images that included HTTPS in the link (which is most/all of them).

The net effect of these changes is that PicasaWeb photos are now appearing on many more frames!  If you have configured a PicasaWeb channel and are still not seeing any photos on your frame please contact me.