Raspberry Pi Forums

Hello guys,

So this is my situation,
-my current camera does not feature wifi for sharing, i want to be able to connect the sd card of the camera to the RPi via a USB SD Card reader and be able to see the pictures via wifi.
-i will travel soon, and i'm planing to take a lot of pictures, i want to feel safe on backing up those pictures to a portable HD using the RPi and the USB SD card reader while i'm at the hotel for example, so in case i lost my camera or the SD goes bad, i would always have a backup.

So this is the hardware i currently have:
-RPi model B, with 8GB SD card with raspbian
-USB Hub (not powered)
-USB SD Card reader
-Portable HD (2.5'' in an non-powered enclosure)

So my idea goes like this, please give me some help:
i want the RPi to un-attended backup the camera SD card, to the portable HD, once i insert it on the USB card reader, what can i use for this?
also that via wi-fi i can be able to see the content of that SD card, via my android phone, so im able to share it with my family back in home for example. for this part i was thinking on samba. will this do the job?

Other two questions:
1. I need to know if any wi-fi adapter that does access-point will work in this case. which do you guys recommend?
2. will i need more energy to power, hub, sd card reader, portable hd, wifi, other than the RPi?

I appreciate your guidance and time guys,
Thanks

You can setup a rule in udev to run a script when it detects a new device being plugged in.
E.g. plugging in your SD Card Reader

1. For a mostly-pain-free wifi AP adapter, get a RT5370.
2. Definitely. You'll need a beefy PSU (at least 2A) for the hub to run the HDD, Pi, and WiFi AP reliably.

I too would like to make this happen, but I'm looking less for the wifi aspect and more for the portable backup. I have an old laptop battery that still holds well enough charge to power the unit, and an hdd with no enclosure. I am ok with soldering and have all the components I need, but I have no idea how to script this. How much do I need to learn to be able to write a script that will do this? I know I can use a card reader and boot Linux and do it all manually, but I would love for it to happen automatically (and I could add a switch for the screen so I could leave it off and conserve power). What do I need to know to start scripting?

Hi,

I am in the process of writing some programs to back up my photo SD Cards to a portable hard drive so that I don't have to take a computer with me when I travel.

I have a basic system working with the Pi, a USB SD-Card reader, a powered USB hub (that powers the Pi and any non-powered drives) and a mix of NTFS and Ext3 drives. The code is in Java as that is my main language but with system calls to mount drives, etc.

The way it works is that you plug in the drives and SD card into the USB hub which is in turn connected to the Pi, power the Pi up and then it boots, starts the copy program, copies all of the files on the SD Card in the DCIM directory to each of the drives organising files into folders by date and then shuts down.

Happy to share what I have done.

Cheers,


Scott.

Hi Scott!

Could you maybe share your work? I want to do the exact same thing!

Thank you
Jakob

A quick search on ebay will find you one of those "3G pocket routers with internal battery"*. They can all be configured to work as self powered Wi-Fi access points. Although the USB socket may be primarily intended to take a cellular modem dongle, many of them will take a USB memory stick and share its files over Wi-Fi. Typically £10 to £15 for the router and another pound or two for a USB card reader. Cheaper, simpler, smaller than doing it with a RPi.

(* eg search 261550621175 on ebay.co.uk. Many sellers offer this or similar item.)

Jaykob wrote:Hi Scott!

Could you maybe share your work? I want to do the exact same thing!

Thank you
Jakob

Hi Jakob,

The system basically work and I am happy to share the Java code, it is a bit of a hybrid as it uses java code to implement system commands. It is written in the standard Java SDK, I am looking to move it to Java Embedded but initial playing shows that V8 only supports limited file IO via java.nio so converting the code is not easy but this would give me programming access to the GPIO and hence use of buttons, displays and so on. I may be able to do this via system commands and keep the current code so still experimenting. The current system is not fast so I am looking at the embedded java to maybe speed things up.

Happy to share the Java code, I use intelliJ but it should go across to Eclipse Ok.


Cheers,



Scott.