Category Archives: FrameChannel

FrameAlbum, FrameChannel

Yes Virginia, Toshiba frames are supported by FrameAlbum

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Someone asked this in a comment and I thought it worthy of a full post.  This applies to any frame that does not support a ‘Custom Photo RSS’ feed.

Unfortunately, both of these solutions require a bit of geekery.  I’ve, so far, been unsuccessful in my attempts to get (whats left of) the FrameChannel folks to redirect the domain to FrameAlbum.  The domain is registered through 2013 so any hopes of grabbing it after it expires are on-hold for now.  A few friendly suggestions to FrameChannel support from disappointed consumers may help them decide. 😉

There are two ways in which you can use your Toshiba frames with FrameAlbum:

– If you run a DNS server (some home routers have this feature) you can configure it to redirect the framechannel.com domain to framealbum.com. I use an open source firewall/router (m0n0wall) that allows me to override specific DNS requests and replace them with my own responses.  Specifically, you want to redirect rss.framechannel.com to rss.framealbum.com and images.framechannel.com to images.framealbum.com.  Owners of D-Link frames will also have to redirect dlink.framechannel.com to, you guessed it, dlink.framealbum.com.

– You can configure your frames to use the FrameAlbum DNS server which will redirect the requests automatically. I have built a public DNS server that contains the correct configuration to redirect all communications from your frame to the FrameAlbum service.  To specify a DNS server usually requires that you configure your frame to have a static IP address.

The more astute of you will ask ‘Hey, why don’t I just point my home router at FrameAlbum’s DNS server and be done with it?’  Well, because it isn’t a general purpose DNS server (it won’t resolve domains that are not required by frames).  And, it would be just plain rude. 😉

I haven’t yet published the details of the FrameAlbum DNS server but if you are interested in giving it a try I’ll happily share the necessary info.  Ping me via any of the methods listed on the Contact Me(e Mee) page and I’ll fill you in.

FrameAlbum, FrameChannel

Bug fixes are in! New features added!

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– The channel details page now includes sample images from the feed. The most recent 16 images from the channel will be displayed on the channel details page.  The channels are currently updated only once per hour so it may take up-to 60 minutes after adding a channel before any sample images are displayed.

– Fixes to the layout issues have been pushed to the live site. This should take care of the ‘borked’ channel detail layout as well as improve the ‘correctness’ of other pages.

– Added the ability to delete channels and frames. You will find this option on the ‘Edit Details’ page for each.  This is irreversible so make sure you reeeeeallly wanna before you do it.  (You could always just add the frame/channel back if you want.)

– DNS tweaks performed. I twiddled some of the knobs on the custom DNS server.  I am now running my Kodak frame in full FrameChannel compatibility mode.  As far as my frame is concerned it is happily talking to ‘framechannel’.  Yippie!

– Registration invite Email changes. As I had feared most folks do not accept mail sent directly from Amazon EC2 instances.  As a result several of the first round of invites bounced back undelivered.  I’ve change the email routing so it now goes through an ‘established’ email server; no more bouncies.  I’ve resent those invites that initially bounced.

That’s it for now — I’m going to release another batch of invites in a few minutes…  Keep your eyes on your email!

As always, questions/comments/bug reports are eagerly invited.

 

FrameAlbum, FrameChannel

First few bugs rolling in…

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In no particular order…

  • The layout channel detail page is borked when viewed with Firefox; it is fine in Chrome and IE.
  • There is currently no way to completely delete a channel.  It is possible to remove a channel from a frame but nothing that allows removing it from the system entirely.
  • There seems to be some confusion on how to get a channel onto a frame.  Clearly some UI and workflow work needs to be done in this area.

More later — thanks for testing and reporting!

Digital Media, FrameAlbum, FrameChannel

The first round of FrameAlbum invites are going out NOW!

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The oft delayed release of the first round of beta registrations is in progress now!  It’s a small set and it’s based on first-come, first-served method.  If all goes well with this group I’ll release a larger group on the next round.

You will receive an email from ‘framealbum@gmail.com’ that contains a link that will take you to a registration page.  You will be prompted for a password and your home ZIP code.  You may also change your username if you wish.  The ZIP code information will be used on future features such as weather updates, local news, traffic, etc.  None of this information is shared with third parties.

Once you are logged into the service you will be presented with options to ‘Add a Frame’ or ‘Add a Channel’.  You may have multiple frames and multiple channels.  A frame may have multiple channels and a channel may be assigned to multiple frames.

Your first step should be to Add a Frame.  You will be asked for a nickname, a Frame ID and to select the model of your frame.  The FrameID is a unique identifier assigned to your frame by it’s manufacturer.  You may leave it blank if you do now know it.  If your frame model is not listed, or you simply don’t know it just choose the ‘Unknown’ option.

You should make note of the ‘Feed URL’ of your frame.  For now this will be the primary method of getting the feed onto your frame.  I’ll try to put together some documentation on the various frames but for now please review your frame’s user manual.  It is commonly referred to as a ‘Custom RSS’ or ‘Custom Photo’ feed.

Once your frame is created, you can add channels.  Channels are what contain the content that is displayed on your frame.  At present only Flickr feeds are supported.  More are under development.

When creating a new Flickr channel it will prompt you for a nickname and the Flickr username of the photostream to view.  Only ‘public’ photostream photos are supported at present.

As always, questions are invited.

Digital Media, FrameAlbum, FrameChannel

Thanks for the help / Status Update / Demo Feed

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Thanks!

Just a quick post to recognize RobF’s help sorting out some issues; with his help FrameAlbum now supports Toshiba frames!  Rob, Thanks for your time and your patience.

 

Status Update:

I’m putting the finishing touches on the channel programming and selection routines today.  I will be releasing some of the beta registrations tonight — watch your email.

If you haven’t done so already, you can register now for the FrameAlbum beta at www.framealbum.com.

 

Demo Feed:

For those of you that have asked, the demo feed is from my Flickr photostream.  Yes, I do shoot a fair bit of live music. 😉

Digital Media, FrameAlbum, FrameChannel, Photos

Breakdown of a FrameChannel request…. Well Helloooooo iPad!

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So I was reviewing my server logs this morning (Yes, I’m a geek — it’s what I do.) and I noticed an interesting entry…

GET /productId=IP14882/frameId=184820da466bcc29ccc5da3620389a26933950e3/sk1=DB7B067C7B8BC66FE49A67DE8D268183D867DA5CF0376662F62CDD5FCA5A0D1B/channellist HTTP/1.1" 404 356 "-" "TTCatalog-iPad/3.0 CFNetwork/485.13.9 Darwin/11.0.0"

There are several interesting bits here…

productId=IP14882

The product ID field is used to communicate what make/model photo frame is trying to connect with the service; In this case it is ‘IP14882’.  I use this information to determine the native screen size of the frame and to track if it supports custom Photo RSS feeds.  So far I have 14 unique productIDs in the database.

frameId=184820da466bcc29ccc5da3620389a26933950e3

FrameId is used to unqiuely identify individual photo frames. Some manufactures use the MAC address of the frame, others use a simple numeric serial number.  This one is larger than most.

sk1=DB7B067C7B8BC66FE49A67DE8D268183D867DA5CF0376662F62CDD5FCA5A0D1B

Huh… I don’t know where to begin on this bit. First time I’ve seen it in a frame request. Anyone?

Update: I’ve re-read the FrameChannel Integration Guide and discovered that this is the SecurityKey.  It is described as:

SECURITYKEY is an encrypted string used to validate that the URL is coming from a genuine partner device.  The security key is an HMACSHA256 digest (as defined in RFC 2104) of the combination of PRODUCTID-FRAMEID  (exactly in that order separated by a single hyphen character), using a secret 32-character key provided by Thinking Screen Media for each productId supplied.  IMPORTANT: the secret key should be considered confidential information, and should not be shared or exposed to the public.  A leak of the security key will require an Frame Media, Inc. Page 2 of 4 Company Confidentialimmediate firmware update by the device partner.

channellist

I’m assuming that this bit indicates that the frame is looking for a list of channels available (Thank you Dr. Obvious). However, I have no notion of the format it is expecting in return. Anyone?
And now for the really interesting bit…

"TTCatalog-iPad/3.0 CFNetwork/485.13.9 Darwin/11.0.0"

Well Hellllooooo iPad! I knew that FrameChannel had an iPad application/widget/thingy but this is my first example request. Many thanks to the intrepid soul who fiddled with their DNS and sent in this request.

Now… If I could just figure out how to respond to a channelList request…  Anyone? Bueller? Anyone?