I’m testing a new channel type to add weather radar images to your frame feeds. It isn’t ready for integration into the website but considering the weather on the ‘right coast’ I thought I would make this offer:
If you would like to have a weather radar image added to your frame drop me an email at framealbum at gmail dot com with your FrameAlbum username and your ZIP code. I’ll manually add it to your channels.
Stay safe!
I’ve been noodling on the problem of how to get photos on frames. FrameAlbum fills the need for folks with internet capable frames (and a little tech knowledge). What about all the folks without internet capable frames, or, don’t have the skills to adjust their frame (or Grandma’s frame 1,200 miles away) to use the FrameAlbum service?
Replace the internet connection with a memory card
Any digital photo frame will have at least one memory card slot. What if you could setup Grandma’s frame with your Flickr/Picasa/other photos on FrameAlbum and then have a memory card sent directly to Grandma! If your Grandma is anything like mine was she has mad cookie baking skillz but was stumped by pretty much anything with more than one knob. This method would not require internet,, wifi, or any other wizardry beyond pushing a memory card into a slot.
Time to pay the piper
This would not be a free service. There would be a fee to cover the cost of the memory card, shipping and a little something for the gnomes that will fill the cards with your photos. This could work as a subscription with a regular update card sent out monthly/quarterly, or a one-shot deal.
Thoughts?
I haven’t built any of this yet. Before I go down this road I’d like to see if there is any interest in such a service. Please share your thoughts in the comments below, or contact me directly.
Thanks for your support of FrameAlbum!
So I was reviewing my server logs this morning (Yes, I’m a geek — it’s what I do.) and I noticed an interesting entry…
GET /productId=IP14882/frameId=184820da466bcc29ccc5da3620389a26933950e3/sk1=DB7B067C7B8BC66FE49A67DE8D268183D867DA5CF0376662F62CDD5FCA5A0D1B/channellist HTTP/1.1" 404 356 "-" "TTCatalog-iPad/3.0 CFNetwork/485.13.9 Darwin/11.0.0"
There are several interesting bits here…
productId=IP14882
The product ID field is used to communicate what make/model photo frame is trying to connect with the service; In this case it is ‘IP14882’. I use this information to determine the native screen size of the frame and to track if it supports custom Photo RSS feeds. So far I have 14 unique productIDs in the database.
frameId=184820da466bcc29ccc5da3620389a26933950e3
FrameId is used to unqiuely identify individual photo frames. Some manufactures use the MAC address of the frame, others use a simple numeric serial number. This one is larger than most.
sk1=DB7B067C7B8BC66FE49A67DE8D268183D867DA5CF0376662F62CDD5FCA5A0D1B
Huh… I don’t know where to begin on this bit. First time I’ve seen it in a frame request. Anyone?
Update: I’ve re-read the FrameChannel Integration Guide and discovered that this is the SecurityKey. It is described as:
SECURITYKEY is an encrypted string used to validate that the URL is coming from a genuine partner device. The security key is an HMACSHA256 digest (as defined in RFC 2104) of the combination of PRODUCTID-FRAMEID (exactly in that order separated by a single hyphen character), using a secret 32-character key provided by Thinking Screen Media for each productId supplied. IMPORTANT: the secret key should be considered confidential information, and should not be shared or exposed to the public. A leak of the security key will require an Frame Media, Inc. Page 2 of 4 Company Confidentialimmediate firmware update by the device partner.
channellist
I’m assuming that this bit indicates that the frame is looking for a list of channels available (Thank you Dr. Obvious). However, I have no notion of the format it is expecting in return. Anyone?
And now for the really interesting bit…
"TTCatalog-iPad/3.0 CFNetwork/485.13.9 Darwin/11.0.0"
Well Hellllooooo iPad! I knew that FrameChannel had an iPad application/widget/thingy but this is my first example request. Many thanks to the intrepid soul who fiddled with their DNS and sent in this request.
Now… If I could just figure out how to respond to a channelList request… Anyone? Bueller? Anyone?
I’ve hit a bit of a hurdle with the Toshiba frames. When they first contact the FrameChannel service they request a ‘channelList’. Frankly, the Toshiba frames are not the only ones that do this but since there are large number of Toshiba frame owners pre-registered for the service I’m focusing on them first.
If anyone here has in-depth knowledge of, or access to, the technical details of the FrameChannel support within the Toshiba digital frames I would be VERY grateful for a bit of guidance.
I’ve decided to focus first on the creation of custom Photo RSS feeds so that folks who are unable/unwilling to manipulate their DNS servers to redirect the old FramChannel URLs will be able to use FrameAlbum.
I’d like some folks to test the demo feed I’ve built using the FrameAlbum service. This is not a hand-coded RSS feed, it was built and served completely by the new service.
To participate in the testing all you need do is enter this URL into your frame’s ‘Custom Photo URL’ feed feature:
http://rss.framealbum.com/feed.php?fid=999999&pin=1234
Please let me know if you have any issues.
Thanks!
Pre-registration is going strong; 250+ so far. Thank you to all that have registered so far.
The web front-end is almost ready. It’s butt-ugly but I’m a fan of the ‘make it work THEN make it pretty’ design philosophy. 😉 I should be releasing a few pre-registrations this weekend.
So far, only public Flickr feeds are supported. Picasa is next on my list.
What feeds would you like to see supported?