Hacking a Digital Picture Frame?

Format _C:

Format _C:

2[H]4U
Joined
Jun 12, 2001
Messages
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I have a digital picture frame that someone gave me because the DC jack was broken (Which I fixed) I have no use for it and I was wondering if anybody has hacked these things
I have no idea of what to do with it? (Anyone have an idea?) However it does have a nice 7" LCD Screen Widescreen I think
The company that made it is OOB (How surprising NOT!:D)
Here are some pictures of the innards

1.jpg


2.jpg


3.jpg


4.jpg


I connected to my PC and Windows 7 installed the drivers for an "Alcor USB Flash Device" AKA Mass Storage Device Driver with 128MB of internal memory

So if the [H] Crew could give me any ideas that would be cheap and easy that would be great (I mostly want a giant clock/Thermometer) But I don't think I can do that easily


Thanks
 
The first place to start is with the markings of the various ICs on that board. There's a good chance it's running some sort of embedded linux, which could make it much easier to hack. One of those chips (and I'm betting it's the biggest one) is the main CPU. Next step is to find the points where there's a serial console available. My money's on the unpopulated 4-pin header below and to the right of the silkscreened revision. Wire up a serial port to the right pins and set the right baud rate (you'll have to figure that out by trial and error), and you might just get a root serial console. From there, it should be fairly simple to do what you want with it. Of course, that's the best-case scenario.
 
I tried to find the datasheet for ICs on the board and the big one marked "SunPlus" is the controller however I can't find a datasheet for it. Someone on another forum suggested getting an Arduino board to control the LCD display. Is it possible to use an Arduino with the LCD I already have? They also said something about an I2C LCD display (Which my display probably uses as the interface) If I do get one of those Arduino boards which one do I need?
Thanks
 
If you can post the writing on the SunPlus chip, and on the LCD, then I can try to look up datasheets for both, and I can help you figure that out.

You'll probably want an Arduino Leonardo (latest model) or Uno (last model back). Primary plus with the Leonardo is you can turn it into a keyboard or mouse (can't do that with an Uno IIRC). If you need a LOT of I/O pins, you'll want to shell out nearly double the cost of a Leonardo/Uno for an Arduino Mega (~50 I/O pins on a Mega vs. ~20 I/O pins on a Leo/Uno).

BTW, I2C (aka (I^2)C or IIC -- eye-two-cee, eye-squared-cee, or eye-eye-cee -- is the Inter-Integrated-Circuit bus. It's pretty dang simple, two wires (clock and data) and a ground line. Wikipedia has a nice article on it. The nifty thing (if I understand it correctly) is that there's no hard limit (i.e. written into the spec) to the number of devices on an I2C bus... but the practical limit (popular addressing conventions) is right around eight devices -- most manufacturers impose their own limits by using 3bit addresses when there's room for 7bit (or longer) addresses. Arduinos can do I2C just fine.
 
The SunPlus chip is marked SunPlus sphe8108 and Here is the PDF Datasheet of the LCD
I can't seem to find a datasheet for the SunPlus chip though

Thanks
 
OK, first off it likely isn't a simple MCU. More than likely its a slightly more customized one intended for multimedia applications. I say this mainly because most smaller MCU's would suck at driving a graphic LCD. It can be done but usually they are CRAZY slow. I see that SPHE appears to be Sunplus's designation for their Multimedia MCUs. For example the SPHE-8202 is designed for DVD players.

Now that being said, I think I have more or less designated the chips on the board:
soal9x.png


Can you post the ID of the chip I labeled "LCD Driver?" That may let you know if there is anything at all you can interface with using an arduino.
 
Guys, that's a controllerless LCD. No I2C or SPI or even parallel addressing here. At this point, Format_C:, you're dealing with analog RGB and getting timing signals right (I really hope you can read timing diagrams!).

You're going to need some DACs (either via IC or the much cheaper --but more labor- and parts-intensive-- R-2R resistance ladder method) and a lot of PWM outputs -- no, bit-banging won't work here. If I'm interpreting the datasheet right, there are nine inputs on that LCD that need PWM or PWM->analog (Could be as low as seven or as high as eleven if I'm reading it wrong.) Problem here is that a stock Leonardo has only seven PWM pins.

You'll want an Arduino Mega, then, or if saving about $10-15 makes a whole lot of difference to you, an Arduino Leonardo and SparkFun's PWM Shield. If you don't know how to read timing diagrams, you're going to want to learn that real quick. (Fortunately, they're pretty simple to understand.) You'll also want an oscilloscope -- maybe even a logic analyzer. A multimeter isn't going to help you here, and going without reduces you to speculation when something goes wrong -- you won't have any way of seeing what's going on, just trial and error and not much else.

I can't really speak to the capabilities of an Arduino, I've yet to play around with them. That said, I'd be quite surprised if you got this thing to do more than a clock (add an RTC chip) and room thermometer (and a temp probe of some sort -- the one from your oven doesn't count!). I'd be blown away if it could handle a pong game in addition to the screen, without some extra hardware (like two Arduinos talking to each other... which can and IIRC has been done).
 
starhawk said:
What did you do with the digital picture frame?
Click to expand...

I am keeping and I decided to use it for the purpose it was made for (A Digital Picture Frame)
I am going to put it over my desk with pictures of my cats on it
 
It's hard to quite hack digital photo frame chip. Nearly impossible!

I am an employee from digital photo frame manufacturer and have sold digital photo frame since 2008.

Take Samsung 2010 digital photo frame chip as an example.
We have the source code from Samsung inc. Even this, it's quite hard for us to modify the program.

Since 2008, I only heard 2 customers to run itself programe on frames. And I don't know how did they do that.

P.S:
The android digital photo frame will be launched later. This is quite easy to hack it :)
 
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