Automatic Phone Picture Uploads?

[Guinea]

Is this possible to accomplish? I would like to have an automated system on my phone and my wife's phone that automatically uploads pictures to my FreeNAS storage in a specific directory whenever the phones connect to the local wireless network in the house. Basically when I get home from work or whatever, my phone automatically connects to the WiFi in the house. I want this to trigger something on my phone that automatically uploads all photos (only the new ones that haven't been uploaded already), to a directory on the NAS. One catch is that I use Android and my wife uses iPhone, so it would need to work on both platforms. Does anything like this exist or is there some sort of app/hack that I can use to accomplish this?

 

[nightshade00013]

I use Syncthing to do exactly this. Don't know if an iPhone app is available but there is a reason why I have no desire to ever touch one.

Anyway, setting the phone as master/send only but then the server to "Trashcan" versioning is what I currently do. I manually remove anything I really don't want from the server. This way after a picture is uploaded it can still be retrieved. You can set multiple run conditions for the Syncthing app on android where it will always run, only run while charging, or only on wifi and they may add others. Once the app senses a new pic during a re-scan and the app is running it will begin an upload.

I dump the folder to a point where Plex can access and then display pictures using it. Probably not a great idea if you have children or share that folder with others and may have pics you don't want seen.

Another thing I do is the exact opposite with ringtones except the exact opposite. My wife wants whatever I have and since I edit most on a computer it's easy to drop into a folder on the server and then let it sync.

This also makes switching to a new device super simple, I just set the phone so it can receive and set things up. Plug it in and walk away or do it right before bed. It is then ready to go in the morning or after a couple hours with all the pictures back along with the ringtones. Then change the picture folder to send only and you are back where you left off.

 

[fracai]

For iOS I used to use Dropbox for this, but it was less than ideal. I'm currently using PhotoSync. It can be configured to sync automatically when you arrive at home and connect to WiFi. It supports a wide array of upload targets (including FTP).
There are still some minor irritations, but I've been very happy overall. The developer is also fairly responsive to questions and suggestions.

 

[Jailer]

I use Nextcloud for this very thing. Works great on Android but the iPhone app won't do background uploads, you have to open the app to sync.

 

[danb35]

Owncloud, Nextcloud, and Plex all support this, at least to some extent.

 

[yottabit]

+1 to Plex. Also Resilio Sync.

I use Plex and Resilio Sync in jails.

I have a Resilio Sync jail setup script checked in at GitHub if you're interested. Github.com/yottabit42

Sent from my Pixel XL using Tapatalk

 

[LIGISTX]

I did use resilio for the longest time, but from my phone to my Windows htpc since I don’t run FreeNAS yet. But the desktop software was always a bit meh. I gave up and just backup straight to amazon from my phone. Unlimited + full quality. Works for me......

Although I may have to look into these other options once I get my FreeNAS box rolled out, be nice to have the pix locally as well.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[yottabit]

I did use resilio for the longest time, but from my phone to my Windows htpc since I don’t run FreeNAS yet. But the desktop software was always a bit meh. I gave up and just backup straight to amazon from my phone. Unlimited + full quality. Works for me......

Although I may have to look into these other options once I get my FreeNAS box rolled out, be nice to have the pix locally as well.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Yep, the UI is basic and that's intended. You use other apps to access the data.

I use Google Photos for most of my photos as I typically take them with my phone. But I still download my own copy to a Z2 dataset with daily snapshots enabled. I have more reason than most to trust Google's data retention quality, but I also trust my NAS and can use it for a worst-case recovery.

Btw, at GitHub I also have a jail setup script to download Google Photos automatically.

Sent from my Pixel XL using Tapatalk

 

[robodanhereford]

For iOS I used to use Dropbox for this, but it was less than ideal. I'm currently using PhotoSync. It can be configured to sync automatically when you arrive at home and connect to WiFi. It supports a wide array of upload targets (including FTP).
There are still some minor irritations, but I've been very happy overall. The developer is also fairly responsive to questions and suggestions.

Fracai I am hoping you can help me out with photosync and freenas. Did you ever get it to work with SMB or did you just run with ftp?

I heard FTP may not be the safest option but I did wanyt to use that for external access potentially so was trying to set up SMB with photosync but I just cannot get it to work properly.

 

[fracai]

I never tried with SMB. FTP probably wouldn't be ideal, but PhotoSync supports both FTP-S and SFTP (basically FTP over SSH). My server is also not accessible outside of my network so I have to VPN first.

What issues are you having with SMB? I'd think it should just be a matter of specifying the address, user, and password. I don't think I'd trust SMB for external access either though, but I'm not familiar with how secure SMB is.

 

[robodanhereford]

PhotoSync actually came back to me and suggested it was due to Freenas not supporting NTM v0.12 SD as it’s disabled by default. I was given instructions on how to change that but I still have the same problem where it just won’t connect.

Going back to your reply. SMB was going to be used as in theory it should be easy and straightforward. It’s only to be used internally and not across the internet, although I guess that would be useful so might go down the sftp route with a key? I did try ftp, again internal only, but couldn’t get that to work either :(

I am going to wipe the box and start clean and take it from there.

 

[fracai]

hmm, weird. My setup was fairly straightforward. Post back once you've started over if you need any help.

 

[robodanhereford]

hmm, weird. My setup was fairly straightforward. Post back once you've started over if you need any help.

Ok I have fresh installed and setup a basic system. created user and a SMB share, can get photosync to login now so thats an improvement however it wont browse any folders. Time to forget SMB for photosync I think.

Tried to setup FTP but just cant login, ive followed some guides and everything seems ok but I just cant understand why I get access denied when trying to ftp in via winscp. any ideas?

Time for bed for me!

 

[fracai]

Are you using a password or key for FTP? Actually, are you connecting to FTP? Or SFTP? Can you SSH to your system?
I have SSH enabled and I created a key for each user that I want to connect. Then place the public key in the authorized keys field. Put the private key in PhotoSync. SFTP doesn't really have anything to do with "FTP" so that service doesn't need to be running.

Also, any error messages when you try to connect? Either in winscp or in the FreeNAS logs?

 

[spotcatbug]

I tried Resilio Sync. I was constantly having to recreate the... syncs (I forget the nomenclature). They would just sort of stop uploading and I couldn't figure out how to get them working again so I would just recreate them.

Eventually I settled on Nextcloud. It's much nicer and so far the uploading has continued to work correctly. The Nextcloud install/setup is a lot steeper than the Resilio install/setup, however. A lot.