This is what the final product looks like hanging on
my living room wall. I hadn't painted or hidden the power
cable in this picture yet. I'm very pleased by this and how
great it turned out! You'd think it would give off a weird
glow that would make it look less like a framed picture and
more like, well, a computer screen but that's not the case.
Maybe it's the glass but it really does look like a framed
picture. I took this to work for a day and a few people did
a double-take when they noticed the image change because
they thought it was just a framed picture.
I toyed around with the idea of screwing plexiglas to the
back of the frame to protect the components but I don't
think I'll do that. It's unnecessary and will certainly be
bad for heat dissipation. I'll probably drill a hole in the
wall near the floor (behind the couch) and another hole
behind the frame. I can then run the power cable in the
wall without having to install a new power receptacle,
though, as I've said before, I don't recommend this!
So, how much electricity does this thing use? I have
a handy tool called a Kill-A-Watt that measures the
electricity used by anything plugged into it. I recommend
that everyone concerned about electricity usage buys one of
these. I paid $25 for mine from someone on eBay. With the
picture frame turned off, it consumes about two watts.
That's normal for electronics that have "soft on" options
like computers since they require a little power all the
time. AC adapters also use a bit of power all the time.
Powered on and with the CPU at 100% and with the hard drive
running, the Kill-A-Watt displayed between 23 and 33 watts.
To determine how much this will cost you if you leave the
thing powered on 24 hours a day, it's a matter of simple
math and a couple assumptions. Multiply the average wattage
of the device, in this case we'll use 25, by the number of
hours in a month, 732, divided by 1000 to get the number of
kilowatt-hours used by this in one month. That's 18.3.
Multiply that number by the cost of electricity per
kilowatt-hour in your area. I pay 5.5 cents per
kilowatt-hour. That comes to about $1.01 meaning that it
costs me a dollar per month to run this for 24 hours a day.
Not bad!
If you want to build one of these digital picture frames
and want to base your design on something I described on
this website, feel free. I'd love to hear from you and see
pictures of your process or at least your final product.
This was one of the most fun and rewarding geek projects
I've ever done. Good luck!
