When I’m 80, I probably can’t be bothered to tinker with whatever new gadgets children are playing with in those days. Chances are, I’ll be content yelling at kids to get off my lawn and reminding everyone of the good old days (“You kids these days…”), back when Google Glass looked idiotic, people still dreamed of self-lacing shoes, and we paid a lot of money for internet service that can’t even handle 4K streaming. So I totally understand why the Famatic, a WiFi-connected digital picture frame for old people who can’t be bothered to mess with computers, came to be.
For all intents and purposes, this is a device that didn’t need to exist. A cheap tablet paired with a stand and a good selection of apps can probably do the same things it does. However, setting a tablet up to seamlessly do nothing but show picture updates of family will probably require a lot of tweaking and experimenting with different apps — something this digital picture frame will just do out of the box.
Famatic is a digital picture frame focused around one-way photo sharing. You can, basically, send videos and photos from your phone to the frame to automatically update what it displays, as well as sync it with your Instagram or Facebook accounts for sharing media from each account to the device (you can share everything or selectively). You can give multiple people access to each Famatic frame, too, so the whole family can get in on the photo-sharing action. Oh yeah, it comes with a simple feedback system that’s based around one-word comments and symbols, so grandpa doesn’t have to think too hard to let the granddaughter know her regular picture updates are appreciated.
The device itself is, basically, a tablet with an integrated docking station. It features a dual-core 1.5GHz ARM CPU, 1GB Of RAM, 8GB of storage (for caching photos), an 8-inch IPS LCD (1024 x 768), onboard speakers, and mic (just in case the old folks want to chat).
A Kickstarter campaign is currently running for Famatic, where you can reserve one for pledges starting at $169.