Lego Digital Picture Frame

The guts of an old laptop
Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala (linux distro)
Screenlets (widget software)
A handful of cron jobs
Motion (motion detection software)
a USB Webcam
and a bucket of Legos makes a…

Lego Internet Thingy!

It displays the time, local weather, news, twitter and latest emails via Screenlets.

The Motion software uses the webcam to look for movement or changes in lighting allowing the screen to shut off when not home or asleep.

A daily alarm is scheduled via crontab which shuffles through my iTunes library music to wake me up in the morning. If Motion detects movement the music stops.