DIY Digital Photo Frame v2 – Dushyant’s thoughts

For those who have just come directly to this page – please view my blog post on construction of the original photo frame:

Now, you may ask – Why v2:

v1 had the following problems:

It was controlled using my blackberry – unfortunately the anyremote application on BB drains the battery really fast. Also, if someone called while the music / video was playing – there was no way I could shut down the system
Was overheating
I got bored with MythTV and was looking at a better interface; more importantly I was just bored with the setup and had to tinker around

So what does v2 have?

Controlled using an actual remote control – bought a ‘Multimedia IR PC Remote Controller with USB Receiver’ from ebay – cost me INR 700/-
Instead of Mythbuntu – it now has Xubuntu 10.04 installed with XBMC which is a much better interface. Though I’m currently debating whether to install Xubuntu 11.04 instead of 10.04 – it has better drivers for the Radeon and 3D performance is supposedly better.
It still allows me to send torrent files via dropbox, as well as act as a backup server for my macbook

I must say the remote control worked like a charm right from scratch and the XBMC interface is absolutely amazing.

What more should it have?

I’ll post the how-to details in some time.