4 ms·

I'm interested in the software side of hardware :) (firmware)

brlewis 19y ago
I have a great firmware idea I'd like to see implemented. We bought a digital photo frame last week. Normally it sits horizontally. Horizontal photos fill the frame, but vertical photos are squeezed to fit. It detects when you turn it on its side, so that vertical photos fill the frame and horizontal photos are squeezed to fit. Squeezed photos are too tiny, so I added horizontal-only and vertical-only Media RSS feeds to ourdoings.com, the world's best photo-sharing site. When we change the orientation of the frame we change the RSS feed. This works great for my wife and me, but it takes some button pressing to change RSS feeds. Too much button pressing for non-technical people, I think. If you hacked the firmware so that it switched back and forth automatically according to the orientation sensor, that would be really cool. People could set up a frame, send it to relatives as a gift, and the relatives could just plug it in and watch it go. http://ourdoings.com/2008-03-01 http://ourdoings.com/2008-03-01
- corentin 19y ago
  I had a quick look at the firmware (file "NK.bin" in the firmware .zip file I found on Samsung's website). From "strings NK.bin|less", I learned that your frame was designed around an RMI (formerly AMD) Alchemy DB1200 reference board, running Windows CE 5.0 on an Au1200 CPU (MIPS32 architecture). More info about this stuff here: http://www.razamicroelectronics.com/products_alchemy/ http://www.razamicroelectronics.com/products_alchemy/ IIRC, the Windows CE development kit contains tools to read filesystem dumps such as this one. edit: there's some open source stuff in it but it looks legit (libFLAC, which is BSD-licensed and dual-license GPL stuff).
- comatose_kid 19y ago
  I'm am embedded guy, mostly software side. But I'm not afraid to use a scope or logic analyzer when necessary :) A more general approach to this problem would be to embed the sensor and a simple core like the ARM7 to handle the image rotation/scaling on a USB memory stick. Then your product would work with any picture frame.

I have a great firmware idea I'd like to see implemented. We bought a digital photo frame last week. Normally it sits horizontally. Horizontal photos fill the frame, but vertical photos are squeezed to fit. It detects when you turn it on its side, so that vertical photos fill the frame and horizontal photos are squeezed to fit. Squeezed photos are too tiny, so I added horizontal-only and vertical-only Media RSS feeds to ourdoings.com, the world's best photo-sharing site. When we change the orientation of the frame we change the RSS feed. This works great for my wife and me, but it takes some button pressing to change RSS feeds. Too much button pressing for non-technical people, I think. If you hacked the firmware so that it switched back and forth automatically according to the orientation sensor, that would be really cool. People could set up a frame, send it to relatives as a gift, and the relatives could just plug it in and watch it go. http://ourdoings.com/2008-03-01 http://ourdoings.com/2008-03-01

corentin 19y ago
I had a quick look at the firmware (file "NK.bin" in the firmware .zip file I found on Samsung's website). From "strings NK.bin|less", I learned that your frame was designed around an RMI (formerly AMD) Alchemy DB1200 reference board, running Windows CE 5.0 on an Au1200 CPU (MIPS32 architecture). More info about this stuff here: http://www.razamicroelectronics.com/products_alchemy/ http://www.razamicroelectronics.com/products_alchemy/ IIRC, the Windows CE development kit contains tools to read filesystem dumps such as this one. edit: there's some open source stuff in it but it looks legit (libFLAC, which is BSD-licensed and dual-license GPL stuff).
comatose_kid 19y ago
I'm am embedded guy, mostly software side. But I'm not afraid to use a scope or logic analyzer when necessary :) A more general approach to this problem would be to embed the sensor and a simple core like the ARM7 to handle the image rotation/scaling on a USB memory stick. Then your product would work with any picture frame.