Digital Photo Frames

TCampbell · Jan 27, 2013

This isn't for me (I dislike the poor image quality in photo frames), but I'm trying to find something for my 79 year old mother who has memory problems. To say she is technology-challenged would be an understatement. I would pay virtually any amount of money to buy her a cellphone if only it had a rotary dial (no... I'm not kidding. Buttons are extremely frustrating for her. She still has a piece of paper which she keeps in her purse with the phone numbers of her children and friends on it because she doesn't understand how to use the menu on the phone with everyone already programmed in.

So here's the problem. She's now living in an assisted living center. It helps her to see photos of her family, children, grandchildren, etc. Getting her something like an iPad so she can look at photos is waaaaay too complicated for her (even though iPads are generally easy for everyone else.)

A few years ago, I stumbled onto a digital photo frame that was almost (but not quite) a perfect idea for elderly people with memory problems. It was designed so that friends and family members could send photos to a special address and those photos would automatically appear on the device. Well... almost. The reason I didn't buy THAT photo frame, was because the person who owned the frame really would get "notifications" that new images had been submitted and they had to review and approve the images before they'd appear on the frame. The notion that she'd have to figure out how review and approve new photos is absolutely out of the question. I've tried to teach her how to retrieve voice mail from her cellphone on a regular basis and she absolutely cannot do it if I'm not there. She also doesn't know how to retrieve a text message. I have to remind my siblings that they can't send her text messages or leave her voicemail because she can't retrieve them and it just gives her stress that she is unable to do these things which are seemingly simple tasks for everyone else.

I have a photo frame that someone gave me as a gift years ago which has (a) WiFi and (b) has the ability to auto-download and display images from online services such as Flickr. I could even program an auto-on / auto-off time so that it would only run during the day and not keep her awake at night. The problem with that frame is that it's made by Kodak, who has decided to exit the digital photo frame business. I don't have the ability to re-configure the frame anymore.

I had been thinking that if I could only find a WiFi photo frame that would let me display images from Flickr then I could create a Flickr account for her, set to private, and then I could upload the images to Flickr and they'd auto-appear on her photo frame without her ever having to do anything but enjoy the images.

Does anyone know of a decent photo frame that has these capabilities and is actually "supported" by a company not in bankruptcy or exiting the market?

The important factor is that she must not need to ever touch the photo frame for any reason. It requires any level of interaction -- no matter how trivial it might seem to the rest of us -- it wont work for her.

Thanks!

Garbz · Jan 28, 2013

Shame you mentioned bankruptcy because I believe Kodak's photo frames did exactly that.

SCraig · Jan 28, 2013

I had virtually the exact same situation with my mother. Before we put her in a nursing home she was basically disassembling her house. If she didn't know what something was she would throw it away. This included her cordless telephone, and even the security system control panel that she somehow managed to get off the wall.

I got her a digital photo frame and solved the problem by using two SD cards, one in the frame and one here at home. Each time I went to see her I'd load new photos on the card here and swap the cards out when I got there. Not automatic but it worked.

TCampbell · Jan 28, 2013

Thanks Scott. I may have to resort to this. Much of our family is spread out to different states, so I was hoping to find a product that used a web-hosted repository of images.

SCraig · Jan 28, 2013

TCampbell said:
Thanks Scott. I may have to resort to this. Much of our family is spread out to different states, so I was hoping to find a product that used a web-hosted repository of images.

Understood. We were lucky in that we were all relatively close. Hope you can find something that will work.

GrantH · Jan 29, 2013

Others could email their photos to you for uploading...

john.langely · Sep 1, 2013

I had the same problem keeping in touch with family over in Canada. I bought a 2nd hand android tablet (Samsung galaxy tab) and installed one of the digital photo frame apps on it from the Google Play store. Much better than a standard digital photo frame from Kodak and the like, in my opinion. Well for a start the screen resolution is much better - 1280×800 on the Samsung vs usually 800x600 for a standard digital photo frame. And most of the apps do things like emailing to the frame, pulling photos down from Flickr etc...

sm4him · Sep 3, 2013

My solution has been the same as Scott's. I put a fairly large sd card in the photo frame and then once in a while, I swap it out with another one. In fact, I *really* need to do that again, soon.
Again, three of the five "kids" are close enough to her for that to work. But even with us being that close, I agree that it would be terrific if there were a way to do it remotely, without involving her in the process.

My mom's 87--been in congestive heart failure for 20 years but still going strong. Still drives--much to the dismay of ALL of her children--she keeps saying she needs to stop but then when we offer solutions it's clear she doesn't plan to quit driving.
She lives on her own but her mental acuity has REALLY gone downhill this past year to the point that I'm pretty worried about her ability to remember even tasks like taking her meds. That's one of the big reasons I want her to stop driving, because I'm afraid she's going to forget where she's going...or forget what happens when the light is red.

Anyway...she has a "computer." Has had several. We've tried for over a decade to get her one she can actually use; she loves the IDEA of it, and when it works, she can play solitaire and jigsaws and look at Facebook, but it's useless for pictures because she can never remember how to get it to show them (although it DOES show the slide show when it's on screensaver). Besides, her computer is always "broken." I go over and "fix" it--which most often means turning it back on, plugging it back in, or at worst, doing a soft reboot. But the very next time I talk to her, she'll mention it's "broken" again. Of course, sometimes, she's just forgotten I was over there to "fix" it. :lmao:

If you find a really good solution to this, let us know! There's probably a good market for this kind of thing. Heck, I'll probably need one myself before too long...

sm4him · Sep 3, 2013

TCampbell said:
She still has a piece of paper which she keeps in her purse with the phone numbers of her children and friends on it

True story: So do I. :lmao:
I have a fancy, schmancy Galaxy S3 phone, and I have all my contacts in it and the calendar and all that. But I also still maintain a hard copy directory of phone numbers and write all my appts, etc. down on an actual paper calendar. Why? For backup, in case something goes wrong with the phone? Sure, I could claim that. But the truth is, it's because I'm OLD, and set in my ways. :lmao:

My dad was a CPA. We bought him one of the very first handheld calculators back in the day. The thing was about $200 and gigantic compared to today's versions. He would use it, and then he would do the exact same calculations by hand.

Years later, his grandkids saw him doing this and asked about it. I've always remembered his reply because it applies to pretty much any technology. He said, basically: "Your generation grew up with calculators and you trust them, so you do a math problem and then you check it on the calculator to see if you got it right. But my generation doesn't trust them, so I do a math problem on the calculator and then check it by hand to see if the calculator got it right." :lol:

The_Traveler · Sep 3, 2013

Just noodling here:

A rasperberry pi with a dedicated email address that saves email attachments to a specific folder and a screen display that uses that download folder as its source.

ronlane · Sep 3, 2013

TCampbell said:
Thanks Scott. I may have to resort to this. Much of our family is spread out to different states, so I was hoping to find a product that used a web-hosted repository of images.

Tim, that sounds like a business opportunity to me. I'm sure that there are plenty of people around the country/world that whould like to be able to do this.