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🖼 Digital Picture Frame

I have a NIX Advance 8 Inch USB Digital Photo Frame that does not have wireless communication.

🖼 Background

The issue is workflow for updating the memory card or USB thumb drive with pictures is a bit manual and clunky. I want to automate the process a little bit more.

📋 Current Process

  1. Create a Digital Picture Frame album in Google Photos (manual).
  2. Add desired photos to album (manual).
  3. Download album as zip file via web interface on Chromebook (manual).
  4. Transfer zip file to LXC (manual).
  5. Use the heic-extract.sh script to extract zip file, convert HEIC files to jpg, and delete MP4 files (auto).
  6. Format SD card as FAT32 (optional) (manual).
  7. Transfer png and jpg files to SD card (manual).
  8. Plug in SD card to digital picture frame (manual).

🚀 Future Process

I'd like to be able to make a custom programmed LILYGO T-Dongle S3 that allows the frame to read from a micro SD card and also allow to write to the SD card wirelessly.

  1. Create a Digital Picture Frame album in Google Photos (manual).
  2. Add desired photos to album (manual).
  3. Download files from album (auto).
  4. Convert HEIC files to jpg (auto).
  5. Wirelessly upload files to frame USB drive via LILYGO T-Dongle S3 (auto).

⚙ Config

SD Card Preparation

Determine USB device

sudo lsusb
Output
Bus 003 Device 003: ID 0bda:0306 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. USB3.0 Card Reader

Look at messages after plugging in USB adapter

sudo dmesg
Output
[ 1409.448074] usb 3-1: new SuperSpeed USB device number 3 using xhci_hcd
[ 1409.468208] usb 3-1: New USB device found, idVendor=0bda, idProduct=0306, bcdDevice= 1.17
[ 1409.468215] usb 3-1: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
[ 1409.468216] usb 3-1: Product: USB3.0 Card Reader
[ 1409.468218] usb 3-1: Manufacturer: Realtek
[ 1409.468219] usb 3-1: SerialNumber: 201506301013
[ 1409.470012] usb-storage 3-1:1.0: USB Mass Storage device detected
[ 1411.925210] sd 3:0:0:1: [sdc] 31116288 512-byte logical blocks: (15.9 GB/14.8 GiB)
[ 1411.926227] sd 3:0:0:1: [sdc] Write Protect is off
[ 1411.926231] sd 3:0:0:1: [sdc] Mode Sense: 2f 00 00 00
[ 1411.927024] sd 3:0:0:1: [sdc] Write cache: disabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA
[ 1411.946558]  sdc: sdc1
[ 1411.946720] sd 3:0:0:1: [sdc] Attached SCSI removable disk

Format the SD card as FAT32

sudo mkfs.vfat -F 32 /dev/sdc

📝 Usage

🔄 HEIC Converter Script

This script converts HEIC images to JPG or PNG format. It can also delete original HEIC files upon successful conversion, delete MP4 files, and extract zip/tar archives.

It requires ImageMagick (magick or convert command) for HEIC conversion, unzip for .zip files, and tar for .tar and compressed tarballs.

Prerequisites

sudo apt install imagemagick

Note

Certain ImageMagick packages uses the convert command and others use the magick command.

Convert individual HEIC files

./heic-converter.sh image.heic photo.heic

Convert individual HEIC file to png and extract zip file

./heic-converter.sh -f png photo.heic --extract-archives archive.zip

Process all files in directory and delete all HEIC files

./heic-converter.sh -d ~/Pictures/MyHEICImages -f jpg --delete-heic-on-success --extract-archives

Process all files in directory and deleta all mp4 files

./heic-converter.sh -d ./my_media --delete-mp4 --extract-archives

Extract archive files, such as zip or tar

./heic-converter.sh --extract-archives my_photos.zip video_archive.tar.gz
heic-converter.sh 
--8<-- "digital-picture-frame/heic-converter.sh"

🔗 References