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Self-hosted photo and video backups directly from your mobile phone

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Re: Self-hosted photo and video backups directly from your mobile phone

#122
post #4

I guess the Github description/HN title is incomplete, it's curious that it's saying it's a backup solution, but what is visible is an web-based photo browser... yeah yeah I get it, just like Google Photos (i.e. App-Which-Must-Not-Be-Named according to the docs[1]), the web viewer is part of the package... I guess it needs a better description, IMO a project with several big components (web, mobile, backend) sells it…

Hey man, project's maintainer here. Thank you for the well thoughts. Naming is hard as it is :P. What would be a nice phase to describe the project?

Re: Self-hosted photo and video backups directly from your mobile phone

#124
I wish Google Photos UI was better but it still seems to be the best solution. Hosting something like this seems like it would cost more time/money/frustration than its worth.

On the other hand, I always think its awesome to see self hosted solutions! It helps to create competition.

Re: Self-hosted photo and video backups directly from your mobile phone

#125
post #53
post #35

I prefer SyncThing on both mobile and desktop devices. It's open source and mature, the server only makes devices findable between each other. It allows 1 or 2 way sync. And it has advanced settings for keeping removed files (e.g. trashbin that cleans anything older than X days.)

+1 syncthing too. Over the years it has gotten rock solid for me. I use it between all my machines and phone. With various 1 to many, 1 to 1 and one way or two way sync. One of my machine is always on and is backuped to the cloud everyday. Effectively making a backup of all my devices at once. Better yet, since syncthing can also save staggered copies of modified files, a rm -rf * will be synced but the backup machin…

I just finished setting up an automated backup system with syncthing and restic, and now my phone, laptop, desktop and server are all backed up in several directions and to a cloud storage area, every night. It's glorious and works like a dream. Happy days!

Re: Self-hosted photo and video backups directly from your mobile phone

#126
post #85
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dream of selling a Box that plugs into the wall that backs up all of your photos and videos and maybe acts as an ActivityPub server, and you can add your friends who also have a Box, and your friends' Boxes back up all of your photos and vice versa. The added benefit of integrating federated social media is that if you want to share a file with your friends, there's zero load time because the file is already backed…

Honestly I think Apple has a good model for this. The value would be in making the box plug-and-play. Apple has proven people will pay a premium for devices that Just Work. It could still be built on open software. Some kind of a cross between Apple’s opinionated approach to defaults and RedHat’s pay-for-support model of developing open source software.

Yeah, the Apple TV should do it.

Re: Self-hosted photo and video backups directly from your mobile phone

#127
post #35

I prefer SyncThing on both mobile and desktop devices. It's open source and mature, the server only makes devices findable between each other. It allows 1 or 2 way sync. And it has advanced settings for keeping removed files (e.g. trashbin that cleans anything older than X days.)

Since this is upvoted so much, I wonder what people's complete setup is for something like this to replace, say, Google Photos. So once the photos are on a "server", what do people recommend for albums, sharing, metadata, geotagging, search, etc?

Photoprism and piwigo seem to be the most used for self hosting. Haven't tried either but slowly making the self hosted move and these were on my research list.

Re: Self-hosted photo and video backups directly from your mobile phone

#128
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dream of selling a Box that plugs into the wall that backs up all of your photos and videos and maybe acts as an ActivityPub server, and you can add your friends who also have a Box, and your friends' Boxes back up all of your photos and vice versa. The added benefit of integrating federated social media is that if you want to share a file with your friends, there's zero load time because the file is already backed…

Why does it need to be a new separate physical device, instead of just software installed on an old phone or laptop?

Because nobody outside of HN is going to install software on an old phone or laptop. But they'll buy a $30 Box.

By all means the software will be open-source (and mostly off-the-shelf if possible) so anyone can install it on whatever device they have, but the killer product will be the Box.

Re: Self-hosted photo and video backups directly from your mobile phone

#129
post #15

Hate to be that guy. But one final feature that Google photos has: Auto share photos of a certain face to an album that is shared with a group. Group is notified when new photos are added. This is CLUTCH for new parents. That being said, this is incredible and I’m definitely moving over the first chance I get.

didn't even know this was a thing, I'm on iOS but we have to keep adding photos to the shared album of our newborn.

Re: Self-hosted photo and video backups directly from your mobile phone

#130
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly I think Apple has a good model for this. The value would be in making the box plug-and-play. Apple has proven people will pay a premium for devices that Just Work. It could still be built on open software. Some kind of a cross between Apple’s opinionated approach to defaults and RedHat’s pay-for-support model of developing open source software.

Yeah, the Apple TV should do it.

They used to have the AirPort which was pretty much iCloud at home. And the early iPod was intended to be a portable personal profile you could plug in to any Mac. We’re not on the best timeline.
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