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Digital Picture

Frame for the AZBox ME

•low-costextensionofthereceiverdisplay•channellogoandEPGdataofthecurrentchannelcanbedisplayedpermanently•alsoavailableforweatherforecastswithdatafromtheInternet•someLinuxexperiencerecommended

Digital Picture Frame

■Channel logo and EPG information are shown on the digital picture frame.

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128 TELE-satellite International — The World‘s Largest Digital TV Trade Magazine — 06-07-08/2012 — www.TELE-satellite.com

Digital Picture Frame

Many viewers are perfectly happy with a conventional set-top box that can be used for watching TV, but nothing else. For those of you with an interest in Linux receivers, however, there are endless op-tions to customise such a receiver, and hundreds of plug-ins and extensions that add new functions to the operating sys-tem.

For this workshop we looked at some-thing really neat: We took a conventional digital picture frame and added some modification so that it could be used as an information panel in conjunction with our AZBox ME. It then displays stylish chan-nel logos, content information on the cur-rent and next events or even the weather forecast for your city. With the setup we used it is possible to add a whole range of tremendous features since text and im-ages can be transferred using HTTP.

But let’s start at the beginning. How come a conventional digital picture frame can be turned into an additional display for the AZBox ME? The trick lies in modi-fying the firmware of the digital picture frame to such an extent that it is able to receive image files via its USB port that is switched into slave mode. The frame then can be used to display all images sent from the Linux receiver. It sounds

Large and Beautiful Channel Display – the DIY wayVitor Martins Augusto

1, 2, 3: A digital picture frame displays the logo of the currently selected channel. Whenever a new channel is selected the display will change accordingly.

all too simple: The receiver generates an image file with the required content and sends the file to the picture frame which in turn instantly displays that file. In order

for that to really work the picture frame obviously needs to come with a USB in-terface. While most digital picture frames these days fulfil this requirement without even the blink of an eye, most are set up as a USB host, which means the USB interface can only be used to read out a USB storage medium and to display the image files that are stored on that me-dium. Unfortunately, those models won’t

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SPF-85H, SPF-85P, SPF-87H, SPF-105P, SPF-107H and SPF-700T models. Numer-ous other inexpensive makes can also be used, provided they come with an AX206 controller chipset and a resolution of 320 x 200 pixels.

These AX206 picture frames are equipped with an integrated battery pack which is of no use to us since the display draws its power from the USB connection anyway. It’s a wise move to remove the battery pack since this eliminates a po-tential source of problems. You only need to unscrew and remove four screws on the backside, lift the back cover and look for the blue battery pack which is hard to miss. Cut the two (red and black) wires using a small sidecutter, keeping in mind to make the cut as close as possible to the circuit board without risking a short circuit.

Now that all hardware requirements are met you need to install the lcd4linux plug-in on your AZBox ME. Our first two attempts on one of the two official firm-ware versions were not met with success because the lcd4linux plug-in requires some libraries that were missing in our firmware. These are the lacking libraries we obtained from the Internet:

• libpython2.6-1.0_2.6.7-ml8. 2_mipsel.ipk• python-imaging_1.1.6-ml1_mipsel. ipk• python-textutils_2.6.7-ml8. 2_mipsel.ipkIn addition, we had to install the follow-

ing extension packages:• python-codecs• python-datetime• python-imaging• python-textutilsThen we were finally able to install

the lcd4linux plug-in and complete all the configuration steps. Unfortunately, however, the LCD display of our digi-tal picture frame remained dark. As it turned out our Linux distribution was still

our Linux receiver we first have to modify its default firmware. Instead of waiting for a user to press a button in order to activate the connection to the PC the pic-ture frame has to react immediately to all incoming files and must display them without delay.

Fully modified firmware versions are available for two specific types of digital picture frames. If you search the web you will easily find them. All you need to make sure is the right firmware version is used for the corresponding frame. You should also make a point of flashing the new firmware precisely as you are instructed.

Some digital picture frames from Sam-sung are suitable for our experiment, notably the SPF-72H, SPF-75H, SPF-83H,

work with the AZBox ME.There are, however, some types of

digital picture frames that allow access-ing their internal memory right from a PC, which means the picture frame must come with an USB slave connection. In such a case the picture frame acts like any other USB device that can be con-trolled from a PC. If we now decide to hook up such a suitable picture frame to

1. Digital picture frame with the AX206 chipset. These models are perfectly suited for our workshop.2. The receiver menu can also be displayed on the digital picture frame.3. Even the weather forecast can be shown on the picture frame. All required data is downloaded thanks to the Internet connection of the AZBox.

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not entirely complete, even with all the above listed libraries and packages in-stalled. Thankfully there is the Internet and after a quick search we discovered a special lcd4linux plug-in which – once installed – replaced the original plug-in by the same name. The new plug-in once and for all featured all required routines so that we were finally able to use our picture frame. If you speak or understand German you may want to look at the German-language MyAZBox forum for a detailed summary of all required steps: http://www.myazbox.de/forum/index. php?page=Thread&postID=52421.

Thanks to the plug-in a number of op-tions are available to display the name of the currently selected channel, show con-tent information on the current and next events and the like.

The absolute high point is a feature that allows displaying channel logos. All you need to do is copy them to the /usr/shared/picons directory. Since standard channel logo packages have a different resolution than the digital picture frame we recommend the installation of dedi-cated picons packages for the picture frame. If required, these packages can even be copied to a separate directory so that they are available with different

TFT Flashing1, 2: Using a tool with the modified firmware that is stored in the archive you first have to flash the digital picture frame with the help of a PC.

Configuration of the lcd4linux plug-in and media player settings:3: The linux4lcd file can be found in the plug-in menu.4: This is where linux4lcd should appear after successful installation of the plug-in and re-start of the receiver.5: It is possible to save the numerous configuration options of the linux4lcd plug-in and retrieve them at a later stage – when you want or need to update the receiver’s firmware, for instance.6: The first menu item takes care of the basic settings of the picture frame.7: You can define the city for the weather forecast here – the plug-in then uses the Internet connection of the AZBox ME to load the corresponding data and to keep the forecast up-to-date.8: The next step of the configuration process deals with the default layout that is comes up every time the receiver is switched on. This is where you can choose to display the channel logo, among other things.9: You decide about how your external panel looks – all elements can be arranged freely on the display.10: Another option group allows activating a different display layout whenever the media player is active. It is possible to show the title of the currently playing movie or song information.11: Due to the sheer range of options it takes some time until the display looks just the way you like it. Luckily, the plug-in visualises all changes right away so that you can always keep an eye on the final result.

resolutions for different purposes such as OSD inserts, for example.

We do have to admit at this point that the whole setup was not yet 100% reli-able and after a few minutes the picture frame went black and could only be re-activated by turning it off and then on again. At the same time we found out that a new firmware distribution for the AZBox ME was being launched and obviously we gave it a go right away.

What a wise move that was, because all that was left for us to do was to install the current lcd4linux plug-in for the pic-ture frame to come back to life. It was not even necessary to manually install addi-tional libraries or packages – the picture

frame has been running smoothly and flawlessly ever since. Occasional hiccups do not bother us any longer since this special version of the picture frame firm-ware goes into a stable mode whenever a problem occurs.

In summary, we can state that our AZBox ME never ceases to surprise and impress us, and now it even comes with an external colour display for additional information such as channel logo, event name, duration, weather, etc. What’s more, we now have installed three entire-ly different firmware versions on our AZ-Box ME and it’s for us to decide whether we only want to watch TV or rather prefer to explore the depths of the DX world.