Hi All,
I have been an Android phone user for years and have a simple but effective app which detects when the phone is connected to my home SSID and then automatically connects to n NFS share and copies / the photos (including WhatsApp etc) to my server. The family have switched to iPhones and am struggling to find a similar solution. Anyone have any ideas?
thanks
Lee.
Lee Nowell submitted this idea :
Icloud?
I have all our files/ photos etc. on a central server which is then backed up locally and to the cloud so would rather a solution that just copies the photos to my server and then would be part of the overall solution. Also all our photos are available via a few devices around the house so splitting them wouldn;t be ideal
I think the problem with the I phone is its increased walled garden security. In other words many apps use their own bespoke storage systems and you have to intentionally, read that as manually, move files to anything outside of the apple system unless you count backing up the phone, but then you are in the same position as the files may be on the pc but in an encrypted back up in Itunes. They are gradually replacing Itunes I notice, but whether they will relax any of the security is anyone's guess. All I can say is that I tend too use Dropbox, and have to manually move files to dropbox on the phone when I want them there. Then, I guess as they appear in the pc, one could automate their further storage from there.
Brian
Connecting a USB cable between iPhone and Windows PC can work via MTP. According to this article, it requires authorizing the transfer from the iPhone end. Then the DCIM camera folder on the iPhone should show up on Windows.
The Apple application store likely has applications for airdropping files onto Windows machines, if you have the money to spend on stuff like that. But the Apple philosophy is mostly to provide full functionality within their own hardware ecosystem. And not provide too many convenience features in-box for people who live in mixed Apple/Windows/Linux worlds. At one time, the excuse would have been manpower related, but they have the money now for developers if they need them.
Paul
Are you sure? I had an update from Apple only a couple of weeks ago.
Thanks all. I probably should have added they to add more complexity, I run Ubuntu so no Windows unfortunately.
Which Android app were you using before the move?
There are various flavors of mtpfs (Media Transfer Protocol as a File System).
Several tools provide a FUSE based file system for mounting MTP devices within the Unix filesystem hierarchy, making it accessible to any program that operates on files and directories.
Examples include mtpfs, jMTPFS, go-mtpfs and simple-mtpfs. "
Paul
The app I was using is called Sweet Home.
Thanks Paul. Will take a look
Looks like the later versions of Ubuntu can auto mount the iPhone when you plug it in via USB I have manually been able to copy the photos and videos off but only those taken by the phone camera. The images and videos in WhatsApp eg are not visible. Looks like it is because it only mounts the DCIM directory. If I could get it to mount / instead I could at least manually back up the other files I needed. Any ideas?
I think this is basic design intent. It's like the camera is an isolated subsystem, and presents DCIM contents when you cable it up. It's not really isolated, but they want the software to make it look like it's walled off.
If you used iTunes, it would probably have yet more rules about what you could or could not do.
Windows 10 has "Bluetooth Send", which may be similar to what the iPhone is doing (Bluetooth is supposed to have standard profiles, to support various things). And who knows, since the Quora stuff was written, things may have changed. My experience with Bluetooth on Windows 10 so far, it is works "pretty crusty", and while they tried to make the graphics appearance of things look nice, it still feels clunky and strange. I would not expect even the simplest operation to work properly the first time. Just pairing my Bluetooth speaker with the computer, the software wants you to believe this is rocket science (all the beeps and burps and sound effects and "loading profiles" and so on).
And there's always the possibility of an App in an App Store, if all other standard or expected procedures fail.
iTunes is probably the closest thing to a design intent. Like it's their "main transfer method for foreign systems". You'll have to find an old version for the PC side and install that and try it out.
iTunesSetup.exe
210,642,248 bytes (32 bit version) (Doesn't have QuickTime, but still has Bonjour, similar to SSDP. I have yet to figure out why it has Bonjour. When does Bonjour kick in ? QuickTime was discontinued because of the rate of bugs and security issues, not a surprise really. The minimum OS now might be Windows 7. A 64 bit version is available.)Paul
Thanks Paul. Challenge I have is that we are running Ubuntu and iTunes is not available.
I haven't tried to because I don't need to, but:
I use Syncthing to do that on Android, it syncs the phone photo folder to my home servers. I take a picture on the phone and it is automatically uploaded to the server.
Syncthing isn't available on iPhone, but NextCloud and OwnCloud are, they do the same stuff. They are easy enough to run on an Ubuntu Server, especially under Docker. I've tested on a Raspberry Pi 4, using Debian Linux, like Ubuntu.
Install Dropbox. You can turn on automatic uploads from the Camera to the Photos dropbox folder. However, don't install the Dropbox client on your other computers/phones unless you have disk space available, as every thing will (naturally) sync to them as well.
Ye don't actually need iTunes, though it is still a currently supported application on Windows for backup maintenance and management of the library. Installing/removing apps can be done on the device.
BTW, most non-apple storage systems (Box, Google Drive, Dropbox etc) now have clients that are as nearly as integrated as iCloud is.
It's not that grim, Brian!
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