USB flash drive that can receive files wirelessly/remotely?

Question

I am looking for a USB flash drive that I can send files to wirelessly or remotely; one that I can transfer files to without actually having to plug it into a computer that the files are on. Does anyone know of anything like this, or of any possible alternatives?

My exact situation is that I have two televisions displaying JPEGs off of a USB flash drive in a restaurant, but each time I want to update the JPEGs I have to retrieve the flash drives from the restaurant and then transfer the updated JPEG files.

Anyone have any ideas, it doesn't necessarily have to involve a flash drive, that was just an idea I thought of.

Answer 1

There's likely no way you can do exactly what you're asking for. The TV reads from a mass storage device, which it expects to never change, unless it writes to it. In other words, it doesn't know when it needs to reread the file allocation table to find a new file. Changing the file system behind the scenes may lead to a situation where the TV never discovers the new file, or worse, crashes because of the inconsistency. The USB device could still simulate an eject/reinsert cycle to get around this problem, but I do not believe there is such a device on the market.

If the TV has a web browser, you could of course use that with a small page on a cheap web host, which refreshes periodically.

But otherwise, you would need an external computer. The Raspberry Pi comes to mind. It's a small (but not too powerful) single-board computer for $25 which has an HDMI output and is powered by USB. It's small enough that you could easily attach it to the back of the TV. It could then connect to the Internet or local network using ethernet or an external USB Wifi device. This solution would probably all in all cost you around $100 in components, but would also require you to set up the Pi to open a web browser or similar, and also simple web page or other mechanism to push the images to the device. This would require extra work, but may be the best solution with regard to cost and size.

Answer 2

If you're not opposed to purchasing new digital picture frames, they do make wireless ones with internal storage. That way, you don't have to worry about peripherals or anything.

Amazon has quite a selection.

Answer 3

The easiest idea might be to pick up two DNLA output devices. Then you could run a DNLA server on the computer to push content directly to the screens over the network. This would include not only being able to push pictures, but also video or music.