Received my
eStarling 802.11n (WPF-588) digital picture frame in the mail today. Wanted to share my thoughts and provide some tips to other who might have received this new product.
I purchased this item out of interest for a digital picture frame that automatically gets photos via wireless. The eStarling frame stood out since it can show both photos and video from social networking sites, has a touchscreen, does not require a PC to configure, and uses speedy 802.11n.
My experience:
A bit of confusion since when the post office guy came today and gave me an Amazon.com box - eStarling is using Amazon to ship their product. I expected a box that said eStarling on it since I bought the frame directly from eStarling. Once I opened the shipping container and saw the box containing the digital picture frame, I was happier.
It wouldn't let me select a wireless network easily out of the box, in fact, the opening screen seemed buggy and wouldn't let me select anything. Turned out it needed software updates. So I plugged it in via ethernet to my internet connected router. The frame immediately started downloading software updates. After these updates, the product became usable. I was able to configure my wireless network and setup connectivity to my
picasa (http://picasaweb.google.com) account and pictures started showing up on the frame!
That's as far as I have gotten. Facebook connectivity doesn't work yet, nor does Google Calendar. When you tap on those buttons, you get a message "Coming in a few days." This product is very unpolished and takes some figuring out. Here are some very necessary tips...
Getting started tips:
* Plug it in via ethernet first and let the frame automatically download updates. After that the product will be usable and the wireless network connectivity will be configurable.
* Be patient when using the touchscreen - it's not blazing fast to respond like a keyboard.
* To activate the frame to show your own photos, tap the Gmail icon and give it a gmail account username and password.
* The frame takes any gmail account, though I recommend you setup a new gmail account just for your frame. Gmail accounts are free. While the manual is not clear about this, the frame's instruction make more sense when you use a new account and not your personal email account. Your photos can be on facebook, picasa, an rss feed, or wherever; you simply need a gmail account to enter otherwise the frame complains about configuration problems.
Basic setup tips:
* To get rid of the example photos, click the little grid on the bottom, which will take you to a view of all the photos on the device. Click the "enter delete mode" button. A red X will show up with the photo of someone else's grandma and you can put that photo out of sight.
* Setting up the time - you have to hit the "x" to be able to clear and type in the minute and hour - which was a little non-intuitive. You can't just select those fields with the touchscreen and start typing.
* Haven't figured out how to selectively pick photos from picasa. I'm thinking I need to use RSS feeds from my picasa account to have more control over which photo albums from picasa are shown.
* To setup the weather, get the WOEID (Where On Earth Id) for your city. How do you find a WOEID? On weather.yahoo.com, search for your city and then look at the url yahoo takes you. The WOEID is a number at the end of the URL. For Columbus, OH, the WOEID is 12776196 (http://weather.yahoo.com/united-states/ohio/columbus-
12776196/).
* To email a photo to your picture frame, just send an email with the photo attached to the gmail account your eStarling.
I bought the frame off eStarling's website -
www.eStarling.com - as a pre-order on October 30, 2009 and the item shipped on November 20th, 2009 via FedEx. It arrived today, November 24th, 2009. I paid using my credit card via Google Checkout.
