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Can I make a Digital Photo Frame?

18 years ago

I bought a new widescreen monitor the other day (thanks for the help!), but now the family has an extra monitor that is a flat screen with a stand. We were looking at it and wondering if we could reuse it as a digital photo frame. Are there kits for such a thing? Looking at it, it seemed to me that some type of flash drive could maybe be attached, or maybe a USB cable. I'm sure this has been done many times, I thought ya'll could point me in the right direction.

Lisa

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Comments (2)

mikie_gw
18 years ago
You need a graphics card to use that monitor.
If you have an old laptop, they generally are lower wattages when running on the ac adapter, maybe 15 - 20watts - a 15 inch LCD monitor is around 30watts
Desktops, most I've checked run at around 100watts.

How's your power bill ?

Of course the Audio Video people have a dohicky to make it a dedicated picture frame... costly though and its really just a computer.
ravencajun Zone 8b TX
18 years ago
well one thing you could do is get a connector adapter switch that allows you to add that extra monitor to your existing pc (dual monitor set up), then you could set up that monitor to simply play a slide show that you have set up on your pc like you can do in the screensaver settings or use a special program to do it.
Seems like an option that would possibly work and not be too expensive.
You can get a USB 2.0 to VGA adapter that would allow you to simply use one of your USB ports to plug it into, or get a little usb hub to sit on your desktop would be even easier, but this should do what you want. Here is a link to one type of adapter.
IF you do a google search for "USB to VGA" adapter you will find many, now if you your monitor has a DVI instead of VGA connection you would need USB to DVI adaptor, most monitors if they have DVI also have VGA connections, but if it is older it may only have VGA.
here is the link to one on newegg so you can look at the specs and cost and comments.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815118301
here is a good article about this
http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/06/08/add_a_monitor_using_usb/

you know some of the new pc and laptops come with more than one monitor plug in on them if that happens to be the case then all you need to do is simply plug that monitor right into your pc in the other open connection.
this one is at a better price point
http://www.buyextras.com/betusb20tosv.html?gclid=CPG59_TyspICFQw_gQodpWKxQQ

Here is a link that might be useful: adapter
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