Solar Powered Digital Picture Frame

Here is a neat little gift I made for my wife last Christmas. It would make a great gift in general though - birthdays, anniversaries, Valentine's Day or other special events!

At the core is a standard off-the-shelf keychain digital picture frame. It is mounted in a fancy enclosure, in this case a flower that is modeled after a chrysanthemum. On top of that, a solar cell has been added so that the picture frame will run indefinitely when placed in a sunny window! Or, you can simply plug it into any USB port and let it run from there.

It can be made using basic tools, including an X-acto knife, soldering iron, wire strippers, and a drill.

Remove these ads by Signing Up

Step 1: Materials and Tools

All of the materials should be pretty easy to find, and most can be substituted or completely changed if you want to. I had to buy the two most important pieces, the digital picture frame and the solar panel, but everything else was just lying around.

MATERIALS

1.5" Digital picture frame - DealExtreme.com
5V, 160mA Solar Panel - DealExtreme.com (or equivalent)
Small flower pot
Some pieces of craft foam - available at any craft store
A mini USB cable - online or in stores
A 0.3V Germanium Diode - to protect the solar panel
Some bits of wire
A chunk of wood, between 0.5 and 1" thick
Some hard plastic drinking straws (or equivalent)
White glue

TOOLS

A Soldering Iron
A Glue Gun
A Scroll Saw or Band Saw (optional)
A Drill Press (or a hand drill, in a pinch)
Scissors
An X-Acto knife with a fresh blade
A computer and printer
Wire cutters/strippers

Mr. Gadgets says: Jun 16, 2012. 5:24 AM

Nice flowers.

mrpeterk says: Jul 17, 2011. 3:18 PM

Hi, I'm really having a hard time finding the 0.3V Germanium Diode. A lot of places don't know what this is...

Thanks for any help I can get
Peter

jeff-o (author) in reply to mrpeterkJul 18, 2011. 8:57 AM

That's not really a requirement - any low-voltage diode will do. You could stick in a regular 1N4001 in there and it would work, though you'd need more sunlight before the charger kicks in.

mrpeterk in reply to jeff-oAug 6, 2011. 10:08 AM

Hi, I would like to if I can stay with the original plan. Where did you the 0.3V Germanium Diode ? I don't know much about electronics. I'm slowly reading and learning about it...

Thanks,
Peter

jeff-o (author) in reply to mrpeterkAug 6, 2011. 12:14 PM

Doesn't exist anymore, apparently. As I said, any diode with a low forward voltage will be fine. This one is less than 60 cents at Digikey: CDBA120SL-G. It will work great!

pizzadox747 says: Mar 26, 2010. 4:15 AM

awesome one....really appreciating idea......ahhhhh but these things aren't available in pakistan.

jeff-o (author) in reply to pizzadox747Mar 26, 2010. 6:15 AM

That'll make things tricky. But really, you could use any pocket-sized digital picture frame you can find, it doesn't have to be this one.

bongodrummer says: Feb 22, 2010. 1:46 PM

Lovely! Good pictures and plenty of detail in there. Thumbs up!
Had you thought of making a USB plug in the base of the pot or concealed under some fake dirt? That way you could move it away from the computer to a window shelf and ditch the trailing wire - suppose you would need a donor USB cable to take a plug from.

Very nice idea.

jeff-o (author) in reply to bongodrummerFeb 22, 2010. 2:37 PM

That's a great idea! And yeah, you could cut apart a USB extension cable to do that. If you like, the USB cable could also be hidden inside the pot (instead of coming up through the surface).