So here it is, the third (and hopefully last) instalment: The Eee PC Digital Picture Frame aka The Eee PF.

I’ve divided it up in four sections, for easy digesting ;) All pictures can be enlarged, and the complete set of pictures can be found in the gallery.

Part 1: Disassembling the Eee PC
Part 2: Mounting the LCD
Part 3: Building the frame
Part 4: Finishing touches

It starts off with an Asus Eee PC 701 2G, which is perfectly small, yet cheap enough to destroy in the name of science.

Push the three tabs at the top of the keyboard in and lift the keyboard up to reveal the keyboard connector at the bottom of the keyboard. Using a small flat screwdriver, push the two locks open and remove the keyboard completely. Next to the keyboard connector is the touchpad connector which should be disconnected as well.

With the keyboard removed, the bottom half of the case is next. Remove the nine screws as indicated in the pictures. Turn the Eee PC over and remove the six remaining screws. For good measure, also remove the battery by sliding the two latches outwards, and slide the battery out. Flip the Mini over again and open the lid again. Using a plastic wedge (or your finger nails if you have them), pry the case open using some gentle force along the sides. Be patient at this point as the plastic latches inside the case, are fragile and will snap if you exercise too much force.

Now we just need to remove the motherboard. Disconnect the speaker and display connectors. There are two latches holding it in place, located at the bottom edge of the PCB. Lift the motherboard up at the right hand side and then pull it out up and sideways.

Time to separate the LCD from the bezel. Six screws are hidden underneath the plastic covers which are stickied in place. Use a plastic wedge along the side of the bezel but be very careful, it is very fragile. Take your time and be gentle. Just four screws and four sticky metal tape strips to remove before you can lift the LCD clean out.

Voilà, the Eee PC naked! Now we are ready for some serious modding ;)

Part 2: Mounting the LCD

Whatever you do, make sure you buy a frame and mount which have a high WAF since it needs to live in the living room. You don’t want to find yourself building something like this and then SWMBO tossing it in the bin because is clashes with the design ;) Take the mount and measure the dimensions of the LCD and frame and carefully cut it to size. As usual; measure twice, cut once :)

The LCD driver board sits neatly underneath the LCD, but when you mount the display into the frame, it doesn’t fit. Cutting away a bit of the frame allows it to be sunken into it and sit flush with the frame. Some double sided tape holds the mount in place.

On to the motherboard. This needs to be mounted with enough clearance above the LCD so that heat can escape and to do this I made my own spacers using normal motherboard spacers which I had plenty of from my PC building days. The screw holes on the Eee PC are tiny, so cut away at the top of the spacers to make them small enough to fit. Looks rather neat, eh?

Part 3: Building the frame

Before we create the frame, we need to think about an alternative heat sink. Normally, the bottom of the keyboard would dissipate the heat, so after doing some testing, I settled on an Akasa Southbridge cooler and some tiny Maplin heat sinks. Tests showed that the temps remained nicely around the 50ºC mark, which will rise to about 65ºC once the back cover will be on. Well within the limits :)

Using some 4mm Pine Stripwood cut to length, mark out all the ports and crevices that need to be carefully removed from the frame to allow access once everything is closed up again.

Here’s a quick mock up of how it all will fit together once we’ve painted the frame and glued it to the photo frame’s back.

Because the power switch would be covered up when the back is glued on, we need to move the switch’s function to somewhere more convenient. Reading this blog post over at Infinity Squared on an external power switch, I decided to go for the smallest I could find at Maplin. My soldering is definitely not the best, so a bit of heat shrink camouflages most of it ;)

I also wanted to have some sort of visual indication that the frame is on or off (other than the tell-tale display ;)). But how to get the minuscule surface mounted LEDs displayed through the frame? I had seen something previously, where light was transported using a small transparent acrylic tube. And when I was killing some time wandering around my local Tesco, I found my 48p answer… translucent golf markers! Remove the heads, drill a few holes and Bob is a relative.

Almost there. Using some left over black paint, paint all the sides and make sure that once assembled, all the small blemishes are hidden. Well, most of them ;)

Ready for assembly! Some glue, some patience and some skilful balancing of weighty items on top of the corners and all that is left to do is add the back cover.

Part 4: Finishing touches

A sheet of hardboard has been cut to be the approximate size and then using patience and lots of sanding made to fit exactly. The space at the bottom of the frame is perfect for the speakers, so using a small drill, create lots of small holes where the sound can penetrate through. It won’t be high fidelity, but it’s good enough for announcements. At the top of the frame, the microphone has been mounted, so we may be able to support voice commands in the future! A quick lick of paint finishes it off.

We’re re-using the stand from the picture frame, but instead of hammering it in the backboard, we have to glue it. I’ve used Araldite, which should create a long lasting strong bond.

And that is it! I’m quite pleased with the result, and even SWMBO commented on how nicely it looks in the living room… result!

As a final note, I haven’t mentioned at all what software the frame is running, so before you bombard me with questions, I better list them here ;)

Update 19.5.2008

I’m sorry, but you are too late. The frame has been recycled

So in all its glory, here it is again :D

Components

1. A warranty voided TiVo
2. A serial LCD. Mine is a 2×20 LCD pre-fitted with a BPK driver board from Milford Instruments, part number 6-121 @ £30.00
3. A bit of cable with 3 wires (like cat5)
4. A 3.5mm stereo jack plug with plastic barrel and strain relief sleeve from Maplin Electronics, part number HF98G @ £0.79
5. A Futaba Servo Connector from Maplin Electronics, part number GZ94C @ £1.49
6. 2x 4-Pin 5.08mm (0.2in.) Spacing Polarised Power Connectors (one male, one female) from Maplin Electronics, part numbers JW64U and JW65V @ £0.79 each. These things are better known as molex connectors
7. A patient SWMBO

Instructions

The most tricky part of this project is opening up the TiVo, so best invite Stuart Booth over who can do it blindfolded using only his nose to guide him ;-) If he’s not available you will have no choice but to do it yourself, so get a Torx T10 screwdriver and remove the 3 screws at the back of the TiVo. THIS WILL VOID YOUR WARRANTY, but I guess you did that already when you installed the Turbonet card and added a nice big hard disk, right? ;-)

With the TiVo opened, you need to put the 2 molex connectors (item 6) to work by making up a splitter which is put in between the hard disk and the power supply. BE VERY CAREFUL AROUND THE POWER SUPPLY! That thing is lethal as it maintains the charge even after it has been switched off for several hours/days. Anyway, the thing you have to bear in mind is that you need to connect all wires on the molex connectors, and on to the +5V and GND (Ground) add two wires which you need to feed to the outside of the TiVo. I used the same space as where my cat5 cable is going out of the TiVo (the one connected to the Turbonet card), just underneath the fan.

Then it is soldering time… Take the 3.5mm stereo jack and connect a wire to the tip of the connector. That was soldering time :-)

Now take all 3 wires (and make sure you have them appropriate coloured, like red for +5V, black for ground and any other colour for the TX (transmit), and connect them to the Servo connector, making sure that you do them in the same order as there are pins on the LCD. My LCD has 3 pins, labelled +5V, GND and Recv (receive), which makes it pretty obvious which wire goes where. Your mileage may vary of course.

Time to test it methinks :-) Close the TiVo and hook it up in your AV setup and power it up again. The LCD display should now be powered, and depending on what model/type you are using it might display something (like garbage or a version number) or in my case, a blank screen with just the backlight on.

Pat yourself on the back, the hard work has been done. Now it is back to the good old computer and open up a telnet and ftp session to the TiVo as you need to install a small .tcl script written by a TiVo community user called Demark. He posted it to this thread and all I had to do was modify it slightly to output the lines correctly. You can find my copy here.

Install the .tcl file in /var/hack and run it with the ‘&’ to detach it from your shell, otherwise you will reboot your TiVo when you try to interrupt it. To stop the script you simply do a ‘touch /tmp/vfd.stop’ and within a minute the script will stop. Make sure you remove the /tmp/vfd.stop file before you start it again though.

So here are a few of the sites linking to Awooga!!!:

Digg.com (where it all started)
Automated Home UK
eHomeUpgrade
Nordic Hardware (Swedish!)
LiveCD News
TousPourUn (French!)
Paul’s Blog

Over the space of a couple of days, I disassembled the laptop and carefully assembled only the bare minimum required parts on the back side of a wooden picture frame. I’m quite pleased with the result if I say so myself :)

Now it is time to slowly put everything together again inside the pictureframe.

Make sure that you can still access the vital ports on the laptop after it is closed.

Until I’ve sorted out a proper on/off solution this little stick will do just fine ;)

And finally, this is what the finished product looks like.