Raspberry Pi Forums

I'm a photographer in need of a way to (with the minimum amount of gear possible) back up files while out in the field. I'm usually in places with no cell service or public wifi.

The basic need is to transfer files from the camera's flash memory card (inserted in a USB card reader) to a portable hard drive.

I've messed around with my Android smartphone a great deal, and it will not read two drives at once. There has to be some sort of proper computing device that will be able to mount two drives at once and have the ability to transfer files from one (read) to the other (write).

I don't want to take a laptop or tablet out in the field with me. An inexpensive Raspberry Pi sounds like a potential fit.

I found this:
http://www.sggimages.blogspot.com/2014/ ... ution.html

So, I got a Raspberry Pi and all the required hardware. I followed the steps listed in the link above, but couldn't make it work.

I have an Android device (rather than an iPad as used in the instructions), so perhaps that's the problem. Here's what I've got:

Raspberry Pi B+
WiFi USB adapter (Edimax EW-7811Un)
Nexus 6 smartphone (Android)

I followed the instructions given in the link above. I got all the way down to the part about the smartphone app, and then diverged because my app is different (VNC Viewer instead of Remoter Pro).

My smartphone doesn't pick up a WiFi network named RPiAdHoc. It's just not there. The VNC Viewer app will not connect to the RPiAdHoc network.

A few things to note:

I'm not familiar at all with networks, programming, Linux, or any of the terms that are used (dhcp, vnc, wlan). It's Greek to me. However, if I can find thorough information or instructions, I can learn. I just need help and someone to spell out the details.

In the link above, when editing the interfaces file, the first line is "Auto lo" in the text given. However, in the screenshot, it's written as "auto lo". Is the language in the file case sensitive?

Also in the link above, when editing the dhcpd.conf file, the text has a line that states "authorative;". However, in the screenshot, it's "authoritative;". There's a mistake there, and I'm not sure which one is correct or if they're both wrong or if it doesn't matter in this case.

In the comments section, someone posted that a few tweaks had to be made to get it to work. The following instructions were posted:

1. followed this guide here
http://www.raspberrypi.org/learning/net ... /README.md

2. Issued the following commands at the command line and then restarted

ifconfig wlan0 up
iwconfig wlan0 mode ad-hoc
iwconfig wlan0 essid "Pi"
ifconfig wlan0 192.168.1.1 netmask 255.255.255.0

3. I also installed exfat support
sudo apt-get install exfat-fuse

4. Used VNC Viewer (free iOS app)

I tried going through those instructions. The link in step one doesn't work, but I found this:

https://www.raspberrypi.org/learning/ne ... on-3/plan/

That seemed to make some sense to me, so I followed through the steps for the server Pi. It all worked fine until the last step:

sudo service dnsmasq restart

I get an error message. It won't work.

Then, picking up with step 2 (ifconfig wlan0 up) it also doesn't work. Just results in an error message.

At this point, I'm way in over my head. I'm not sure I'm on the right path to do what I want to do (just a simple and small computing device to help me transfer files while sitting out in the remote desert).

Can anyone offer suggestions? I'd greatly appreciate it!

One easy way to solve a problem is to find a different way to do things. I find that when I plug my android phone into the Pi with a USB cable, it mounts the phone as a USB drive. Simple case of copy and paste then, but in the field you probably need a touch screen - there are a few around, and a battery pack.

Plug in the card to the Pi, and copy files to the Pi's SD card, phone or whatever. The touch screen means you don't need the network or the iPad.

(I might be missing a few details - I have not given this a greate deal of thought)

Navyscourge wrote: (I might be missing a few details - I have not given this a greate deal of thought)

No worries. Thanks for the info.

I'm trying to not utilize my phone's memory for this exercise.

What I'd like to do is transfer files directly from the flash memory cards (out of the camera) to a portable hard drive. This will be transfers of several hundred files all at once. Total size of the transfer could be many gigabytes (1 to 16).

of course you could use a Raspberry pi to achieve this but there are other options :
a quick google shows :
http://www.nextodi.com/product/fr_nd2901_feature.html for example