MiniDIG 1.5″ Digital Photo Album

 

The MiniDig Keychain Digital Photo Album lets you share your pictures with family and friends – anytime, anywhere! The digital photo album stores up to 54 pictures and can be shared with others via a slide show or manual display. The perfect item to share memories! Makes a great present for proud grandparents! Includes batteries, USB cable, software (Windows XP, VISTA, and WIN2000 compatible) and instructions.MiniDig Keychain Digital Photo Album Features:

Carry 54 of your favorite digital images wherever you go!

Screen is 1.5″ LCD display

Storage Capacity 2MB

Includes 4 “Button Cell” replaceable batteries

Functions include date, time, calendar and alarm

Software compatible with Windows XP, VISTA, and WIN2000

Comes with protective cloth pouch and neck strap

Includes USB cable

Supported formats: BMP, JPG, PNG, GIF

Clips on keychain, belt loop, backpack or anywhere

Slide show display option

Dimensions: 3″ Long x 1.75″ Wide x 0.5″ Deep 

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How many of us buy these great techie gadgets and then have headaches making them work?

Over the holidays I bought a miniDig 1.5″ Digital Photo Album .
I actually bought 2 of them. One for me and one for my Mother.

If you had problems getting yours to work correctly here are some helpful hints

Problem number 1.
Mom has a Mac. This device is not compatible with Mac.  I missed seeing this on the packaging when I bought it.
I had assumed that this worked as a USB device and they could attach the device and drag the images onto it. NOPE. This is for PC only.
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OK. Mom sent me her pictures by email. I will put them on MY miniDig and send it to her. We can swap.

I downloaded her images onto its own folder on my PC and then used Ifranview to compress any images that seemed too large.

I also used MS paint and it’s ability to  cut and crop to make ‘newer’ and smaller versions of the pictures that she wanted on the miniDIG.

I may not have had to do that, as the install / sync program compresses much of the image.

Note to self: pictures of large groups of folks sitting together.. ended up getting cut in half.. left and right sides.. as the whole image would not fit in the miniDIG

OK. I have the images ready and all in one folder.

 

I then installed the Digital Phot Frame software. I installed it on two different PCs and the autorun of the setup did not work either time.

Close any open programs. then open your directory explorer and find the Disk and click on Setup.exe

I used all the normal defaults .. at the end it says great I am going to start the application.. OK.

PROBLEM NUMBER 2
Then you get this error window!

Photo Viewer device was not found. Please Connect. Retry?

OK that is NOT what I expected to see the first time that application ran.

I looked at the small print instructions that came with the unit and found nothing about this error message.

OK.  Here is what you have to do.

If this is your first time using the device, remove the clear plastic tab from the back of the unit. You do not need to unscrew it. Pull gently to the side and slip it out. This was a way to keep the batteries from making contact and WORKING until the unit was with the customer.

OK.  Then you can follow their directions for setting the clock..

OK Now here is what you need to do. Turn on the Unit and plug it in to the USB port. When you plug it in the Unit’s screen will say :

> USB Charge
 USB  Update

Use either of the side buttons to switch to point the > to USB Update.

Then press the center ROUND button.
WAIT, the system needs to recognize this as a USB device before it will work with the Photo Viewer sync program.

Then the system will be looking for the new USB device

Now when you start the Photo Viewer application the screen to put images on the device will finally work!

You may need to continue to work with the images OUTSIDE of application using MS Paint, Ifranview,  or other program to get the photos into the right size and proportion for importing.

Navigate to your image.

Choose the Cut to crop the image.

Once you have the image the way that you want. Click on the POST.  

Once you have selected all of the pictures that you want to add to your MiniDIG, then click on the SYNC ..

I did not find a NICE way to END the program once you have the images copied to the miniDIG.
Make sure that all the images are sync’d to the miniDIG and then unplug the device.

Good Luck.