Show HN: Turning my 10y old tablet into digital photo frame

Pankaj Tanwar repurposed his 10-year-old tablet into a digital photo frame that displays images from a shared Google Photos album. After discovering the tablet in a box of old items, he managed to power it on despite its slow performance and outdated Android version. To avoid logging into Gmail on the device, he sought a way to display photos from a shared album. He faced challenges with the tablet's outdated browser, which couldn't handle modern websites. Eventually, he found an open-source app called Electric Sign, but it struggled with SSL and modern web content.

To create a simple HTML page for displaying images, he attempted various hosting platforms but encountered issues. He then set up a custom nginx server to use HTTP instead of HTTPS, which was not ideal for security. After realizing there was no public Google Photos API, he created a public album link and used regex to extract image URLs from the HTML. However, the tablet's browser did not support fetch, leading him to use XMLHttpRequest, which resulted in CORS issues.

Ultimately, he wrote a bash script to fetch the album content, extract unique URLs, and update an HTML file with a random image. He scheduled the script to run hourly, ensuring the display was refreshed regularly. The tablet is now set up as a digital photo frame, showcasing images while he plans to enhance its aesthetic with a wooden frame.