Looking to turn an andorid tab into a wifi photo frame

[master7045]

Does anyone know of a Free or cheap app that can run on a cheap ($150ish) Android tab that will effectivly turn it into a wifi photo frame? What I mean by wifi photo frame is that I can upload my pictures to photobucket/shutterfly/picasa/your fav photo hosting site from my house and the app that is running on the tablet will auto display them?

This will be given to my grandma who is computer not smart, but does have wifi in her house. Basically I want to set this up at my house and have it ready to go when I mail it to her. All she has to do is plug it in and launch the app.

Kodak used to make a 7" photo frame (I think the name was Kodak Pulse 7" wifi frame) that did this exact thing, but alas they went into bankruptcy and killed off this part of the business. Now all the ones online are $250 + which is crazy.

 

[Fardringle]

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=be.wyseur.photo
(I'm not specifically recommending this as I haven't tried it, but it's the only app I could find that does what you want.)

 

[master7045]

Thanks for the tip, I'll be sure to give it a try. It doesn't look like it will receive and play e-mailed photos though, but it can't hurt to try.

My intial plan of attach was to set up a Picasa e-mail for my grandma. Then use an app that syncs with picasa and plays back the photos via a slideshow. This way family can e-mail photos to a specific e-mail address that will auto add to her 1 and only photo album. That part works. The ticky part is finding an app that will display the photos in a slideshow (easy as well) AND show new pictures as they are added to her picasa web album. <---The hard part.

I can't find an app that will auto update itself while playing the slideshow. If by some miracle I'm not the first person to want this, please let me know how your solution works!

 

[cronos]

What about using Dropbox? Designate a folder in Dropbox that will 'always sync' on the tablet. And then point the slideshow app to that folder.

You don't have to email her the pictures, just copy the new pictures to the Dropbox folder on your own computer/tablet/phone and the tablet will automatically update and show the latest pictures.

 

[master7045]

What about using Dropbox? Designate a folder in Dropbox that will 'always sync' on the tablet. And then point the slideshow app to that folder.

You don't have to email her the pictures, just copy the new pictures to the Dropbox folder on your own computer/tablet/phone and the tablet will automatically update and show the latest pictures.

This would work, and I may end up doing something like it. The big reason why not is that I want other family members to be able to send pictures directly to her. That way I'm not the middle man everytime someone wants to upload a photo. The other negative is that every other family member would have to sign into dropbox and remember the credentials. I don't want to make people remember a username/password. In my head it's easier to give someone an e-mail address and say e-mail any picture you want grandma to see to this address. than go to dropbox.com, sign into the app using this e-mail and password, & then upload your photo

 

[Raduque]

They don't need to know the credentials. Just setup the dropbox app on their PCs and tell them to just save the pictures into the Dropbox folder (or have Dropbox index the folder they use to save photos already).

 

[wirednuts]

edit nvmd

 

[wirednuts]

Thanks for the tip, I'll be sure to give it a try. It doesn't look like it will receive and play e-mailed photos though, but it can't hurt to try.

My intial plan of attach was to set up a Picasa e-mail for my grandma. Then use an app that syncs with picasa and plays back the photos via a slideshow. This way family can e-mail photos to a specific e-mail address that will auto add to her 1 and only photo album. That part works. The ticky part is finding an app that will display the photos in a slideshow (easy as well) AND show new pictures as they are added to her picasa web album. <---The hard part.

I can't find an app that will auto update itself while playing the slideshow. If by some miracle I'm not the first person to want this, please let me know how your solution works!

youve tried all the photo slideshow apps? a lot of them claim to do what you want.. i think...

 

[AkumaX]

This would work, and I may end up doing something like it. The big reason why not is that I want other family members to be able to send pictures directly to her. That way I'm not the middle man everytime someone wants to upload a photo. The other negative is that every other family member would have to sign into dropbox and remember the credentials. I don't want to make people remember a username/password. In my head it's easier to give someone an e-mail address and say e-mail any picture you want grandma to see to this address. than go to dropbox.com, sign into the app using this e-mail and password, & then upload your photo

found this:

http://sendtodropbox.com/

also, thanks for the idea - i have a crappy android tablet that this would be perfect for

 

[vshah]

look into the familiar photo sharing app. you can set it up once on her tablet, and then you can push pictures to her from any of your smartphones/tablets/computers. this app is designed to do exactly what you're trying to do - private photo sharing between family members.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.Familiar.Android.FamiliarAppV1

 

[master7045]

Thanks everyone for the suggestions! I'm going to continue to work at this as I haven't found the perfect solution just yet. like I said the hard part is getting the slideshow to actually show new pictures. You know, the whole point of a headless "auto" slideshow.

 

[vshah]

Thanks everyone for the suggestions! I'm going to continue to work at this as I haven't found the perfect solution just yet. like I said the hard part is getting the slideshow to actually show new pictures. You know, the whole point of a headless "auto" slideshow.

i emailed the developer of familiar and he said that feature is coming soon. maybe you could email him too & it may come sooner?

 

[AkumaX]

Thanks everyone for the suggestions! I'm going to continue to work at this as I haven't found the perfect solution just yet. like I said the hard part is getting the slideshow to actually show new pictures. You know, the whole point of a headless "auto" slideshow.

I thought dropbox + send email to dropbox should work out pretty well, no?

Then if you shuffle the slideshow, it should pick up new pictures on every iteration. I'll try it out when I get home

 

[wirednuts]

definitely keep this thread updated on your findings because something like this can be so hard to find without simply trying various options. even in windows, we all know how hard it can be to keep network drives refreshed, and subsequently the program your using to keep its file directories update in a live fashion...

 

[Raduque]

Any new information on this? My dad is transferring soon, and I'd like to do this for him with an old tablet I have. It has a sim slot and supports HSPA on AT&T, so I thought I would add a line and give him a 3g-connected picture fame that he could browse the internet on, in a pinch.

 

[master7045]

Sorry for not updating this, but I ended up finding one of the Kodak wifi frames and bought that off amazon for the same price as the tablet. The closest I got was with picasa account which you can e-mail photos to and then there are a few apps out there that will show slideshows from it. The one I was working with most was called "Familiar" and the other was a picasa sync (don't remember the name). The only thing they didn't do well was auto upload new photos to the slideshow if the slideshow was already playing. If you'r dad is savy enough to close the app and re-launch it, this will work well. My grandma was not, so I ended up returning it.

 

[vshah]

Sorry for not updating this, but I ended up finding one of the Kodak wifi frames and bought that off amazon for the same price as the tablet. The closest I got was with picasa account which you can e-mail photos to and then there are a few apps out there that will show slideshows from it. The one I was working with most was called "Familiar" and the other was a picasa sync (don't remember the name). The only thing they didn't do well was auto upload new photos to the slideshow if the slideshow was already playing. If you'r dad is savy enough to close the app and re-launch it, this will work well. My grandma was not, so I ended up returning it.

You could use tasker to kill and restart familiar once a day, perhaps?

 

[Raduque]

You could use tasker to kill and restart familiar once a day, perhaps?

That's definitely an option. My dad is decently tech savvy enough to kill and restart an Android app, though.

 

[samlinasoft]

Sorry shameless plug. I had the same problem with wanting to share photos of my kids with my parents. So I whipped up an app for it. It pulls photos from dropbox and you can also get it to fetch photos from an email address. How I use it is that I point my app to a mail folder in Gmail. I use the email filtering functionality of Gmail to move photo emails from my inbox to that folder (voila instant whitelist!). I then share the Gmail address with my siblings so that they can email photos of their kids to our parents as well. I also looked at the frames by Pix-Star and Kodak but they were pretty expensive for what they did. I just set up my app on a sub $100 android tablet - simple.

End of shameless plug.