Christmas is coming, we recently had a newborn, and we aren’t sharing pictures of them on social media. But of course, we’d like to share photos with family, and a digital photo frame seems like an ideal way to do that.
I’m considering a solution with Immich, and found ImmichFrame. This doesn’t recommend making it available to the internet, however, but running it on a Raspberry Pi with only the images we intend to share this way seems like a reasonable amount of risk.
Regarding Immich Frame, how does it handle when the server is unavailable, when say, my IP address changes? Ideally, I don’t want this gift to become a series of tech support problems, there’s good reason I haven’t offered family access to anything else I self host.
Also, what frames do y’all recommend? Not looking to break the bank here, as I may be buying several. I assume something simple and Android would be best, maybe even something that can have its OS replaced with stock? I’d hate to get stuck with something locked down and unworkable, or that introduces its own broad privacy/security issues.
Lastly, please feel free to suggest other alternatives. Maybe there’s a solution that sends images encrypted and decrypts them on device, and doesn’t require me to self-host Immich, for example?
I did the old Magic Mirror 2 with an iframe feed off the server. Hangs in the living room, gives general weather updates, displays calendar, randomly displays pictures, can pull up various security cam feeds, etc.
Dang, that’s incredibly cool. Hadn’t heard of this!
I’m about to try this. I’ve ordered a Frameo picture frame that runs Android and supposedly you can use adb to sideload Immichframe and set it as the home app so it launches automatically. My Immich instance is on a private mesh network so I was going to configure the frame to autoconnect to the mesh network and only have permissions to access that one machine.
If I cannot get this to work, I’ll fail back to just manually loading the pictures on an SD card and swap out the card for one with new pictures when I visit.
Very nice! Was looking at the exact same frames after doing some more research, a 10 inch frame for about as cheap as some empty frames I’ve seen, with documentation on the process provided by Immich Frame themselves.
Your private mesh network is an elegant addition to it as well, I may consider something similar. As mentioned in the post, Immich Frame doesn’t recommend being exposed to the Internet, and just has support for a simple single password system. I still feel better about that than being in Frameo’s database I know nothing about and would be paying suspiciously little for, but it’s not exactly ironclad either.
Definitely let me know how it goes if you tackle it in the next week or so!
Build your own with a Raspberry or Arduino. Easiest and cheapest way, if you don’t want cloud and ads.
digital photo frame seems like an ideal way to do that.
What? What’s wrong with either just putting them on a web album and letting the family browse them, or else sending actual physical prints? I certainly wouldn’t want a digital frame in my living room with someone else controlling what it was showing.
Digital photo frame that somebody else controls is great for the case where you are a person who can’t do tech, but you have somebody you trust who can, and you want to get a daily update delivered to your kitchen showing what all the grandkids have been getting up to.
Here and there I use the immich proxy. Allows password protected sharing directly from immich, does not require to expose much to the outer world.
Are there no frames that just take usb/microsd?
There are but my assumption is they want something wireless that they can update often with photos of the child
Correct! This would be going out to family that doesn’t just live close enough to see her and take their own pictures, so being able to add more remotely is the whole point!
