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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

#241

The recommended spec is 4 cores and 6GB. Running this 24/7 for a year in US where the carbon intensity is about 400 gCO₂eq/kWh would produce about 150kg of CO2 per user per year. I appreciate the intent of this project, but it is not a sustainable approach. If you are taking a couple of pictures a day, you only need to run this service for a couple of minutes per day, the rest is wasted. With Google Photos, as a SaaS…

[deleted]

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

#242
post #199

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.

> I wish Google Photos UI was better but it still seems to be the best solution Unless you have kids. [If you have kids Google is a no-go]( https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/21/technology/google-surveil... ). Since becoming a dad I've finally started to untangle myself from Google. Only thing left is my android phone - seriously considering an alternative e.g. apple (but I wouldn't store pictures with them either)

> If you have kids Google is a no-go

I was expecting this to be Hacker News hyperbole but god that is TERRIFYING. Apple's CSAM plans were using a database of known images and got enough backlash, but Google trying to use AI to detect abuse? What a HORRIBLE idea.

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

#243

The recommended spec is 4 cores and 6GB. Running this 24/7 for a year in US where the carbon intensity is about 400 gCO₂eq/kWh would produce about 150kg of CO2 per user per year. I appreciate the intent of this project, but it is not a sustainable approach. If you are taking a couple of pictures a day, you only need to run this service for a couple of minutes per day, the rest is wasted. With Google Photos, as a SaaS…

First, do you suppose it's running at full pelt 24/7? If suggest the specs are that high to speed to batch operations. Most of the time it'll be idling.

And second, letting Google or Apple manage this doesn't mean it doesn't use energy. They're offsetting or generating? So am I.

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

#244

The recommended spec is 4 cores and 6GB. Running this 24/7 for a year in US where the carbon intensity is about 400 gCO₂eq/kWh would produce about 150kg of CO2 per user per year. I appreciate the intent of this project, but it is not a sustainable approach. If you are taking a couple of pictures a day, you only need to run this service for a couple of minutes per day, the rest is wasted. With Google Photos, as a SaaS…

You should write it as how much it adds to electricity bill, not in kg of CO2. Kg of CO2 is a unit of fearmongering. And if you believe it's not, then the problem is why people are allowed to buy electricity so cheaply, not a photo-sync service. By the way, a cow produces 120Kg of methane a year.

> By the way, a cow produces 120Kg of methane a year.

Thank goodness we're eating so many of them to help reduce their population.

/s

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

#245

The recommended spec is 4 cores and 6GB. Running this 24/7 for a year in US where the carbon intensity is about 400 gCO₂eq/kWh would produce about 150kg of CO2 per user per year. I appreciate the intent of this project, but it is not a sustainable approach. If you are taking a couple of pictures a day, you only need to run this service for a couple of minutes per day, the rest is wasted. With Google Photos, as a SaaS…

>If you are taking a couple of pictures a day, you only need to run this service for a couple of minutes per day, the rest is wasted.

You can configure your server to sleep (scheduled or use WoL), which will halve (or more) that carbon emission number.

Speaking of which, individual action will never approach the level that corporate action could. Take a look at the practice of gas flaring (2022 estimate of ~357 million tons CO2) which is about ~45kg/person on earth. Changing flaring to capture will have a bigger impact than a minisucle fraction of the population not running a server.

But profits trump everything, so I guess we're stuck shaming individuals instead.

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

#246
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?

Photo Management

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

#247

Has anyone tried setting this up on a raspberry pi 4?

I used it on a Pi 4 for a month or two. Everything else was fine but the pi was really starting to struggle running the machine learning container, especially when I imported a bunch of photos at once. I have it on a beefier x86 machine now and things have been smooth.

I guess thats only an issue when you import photos though. Once they're indexed, it should run fine.

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

#248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

I would be very careful when setting up any kind of replication on backup repositories. I much prefer to actually backup to multiple destination, since when replicating, any error will propagate to the synchronized repositories as well, rendering all of the equally useless.

Great advice thanks - I have taken some steps to mitigate that (snapshotting, and a manual weekly USB backup) but you're right, this is an area I should look at more closely.

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

#249

The recommended spec is 4 cores and 6GB. Running this 24/7 for a year in US where the carbon intensity is about 400 gCO₂eq/kWh would produce about 150kg of CO2 per user per year. I appreciate the intent of this project, but it is not a sustainable approach. If you are taking a couple of pictures a day, you only need to run this service for a couple of minutes per day, the rest is wasted. With Google Photos, as a SaaS…

First, do you suppose it's running at full pelt 24/7? If suggest the specs are that high to speed to batch operations. Most of the time it'll be idling. And second, letting Google or Apple manage this doesn't mean it doesn't use energy. They're offsetting or generating? So am I.

An idle server still consumes energy. Energy consumption increases with CPU load, RAM consumes the same regardless of the usage.

When Google manages your pictures, they don't have idle servers for each users. This is the main reason their service is more sustainable.

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

#250
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you using SyncThing on iOS?

AFAIK you can use SyncThing-like utilities, like Möbius Sync, on iOS, but not for photos, because… iOS does not consider a photo a file. Which is baffling (probably for some security reason), so I have to stick with a USB cord and ifuse + heif-convert on Linux.

What I've done is to leave a Windows VM running which has both the iCloud Photos app, as well as Syncthing, both pointing at same directory. This then works as an iCloud/syncthing bridge, letting my iPhone sync with my linux machines.
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