Making things smarter – building a wireless digital picture frame

Taking mundane objects and connecting them to one another is one of the key intentions of the whole IoT phenomenon. In our next recipe, we will create a digital picture frame. However, ours is is not the typical off-the-shelf version where you load images from an SD card. Instead, we will use a combination of web services that are commonly used in IoT together with a wireless image player to update the digital picture frame dynamically and seamlessly from a smartphone.

Getting ready

The materials needed are as follows:

• A smartphone with internet connectivity

• The BBB powered by 5V

• A Wi-Fi dongle

• An LCD (5 inches or larger)

You will also need to set up two web service accounts:

• Dropbox: The free plan is adequate (http://www.dropbox.com)

• IFTTT: This is a free service (http://www.ifttt.com)

Using IFTTT

For this recipe, we will incorporate the If This Then That (IFTTT) web service. Although not perfect, IFTTT is a fun, rapid development...