Eye-Fi Ah Ha…
June 28, 2009
I’m trying to get my documentation up a couple of notches, and in the process picked up an Eye-Fi. My plan is to keep my camera on a mount (gooseneck screwed to a board for support) on my workbench, and set it up to upload any pictures I take to an easy-to-access folder (with resized versions of the photo for different uses) for quick grabbing. This also makes it easy to keep them in backups.
I wasn’t sure whether the Eye-Fi was smart enough to save things to a different host than I’d configured it on, though comments for Jeff Tchang’s standalone server seemed to indicate a host running a server should automatically be detected…
It turns out that when the Eye-Fi starts up, it ARPs for anything in the same network (actually not sure if it uses the netmask or just hits everything else in the same /24), then tries to connect to port 59278 on anything it finds… so it actually is automatically able to find a host to upload to, it’s just um… lacking a little elegance.
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June 29th, 2009 at 3:25 am
Hi,
I’m not really sure what you’re trying to do, but I’ll offer up a few ideas, and hopefully these will help.
1) You can upload locally only, to a Mac or a PC, and use something like Lightroom to automate anything you want. You can have it create different sized images, add watermarks, etc…
OR
2) one of the 30 destinations that you’ll see is Gallery 2. Gallery is the largest open source project for photo sharing. There are tons of plug-ins for it, and you can set-up your own Gallery server, and again, have it do anything you’d like. There is tons of support on the net for this project, and that’s the reason we also support it. It gives anyone the freedom to make their Eye-Fi Card upload to any destination, not just the ones that we support, and not just locally.
Hope this helps –
Ziv.
June 29th, 2009 at 4:46 am
Hi Ziv,
Thanks for the response. What I really want is to do is use a Linux box for image processing (free & scriptable image processing, data manipulation, and transferring, plus for me it just happens to be the always-on box at home that connects to the network the Eye-Fi goes on), and to be able to automatically post pictures both to my website (hosting provider doesn’t support Gallery) and to standard sharing sites, with all the processing happening on my machines (I prefer for my photos not to leave my network unless I specifically request that).
I was actually a bit hesitant to buy an Eye-Fi because of the restriction that even to set it up I had to create an account on your servers. It just really isn’t necessary for the product to work, and the requirement just makes it all a bit icky for those of us who are into privacy and keeping track of where our data flows. Sure, you don’t need to prove you’re who you say you are, etc… still…
And I’m really not into having my accounts & passwords stored on your servers (as opposed to just on the device and have it handle the upload directly).
The killer app for me is close to what the Eye-Fi provides, just without requiring online registration or storing sensitive information on your servers, and with the option to give it a static IP address of my choice to drop the photos on to, and have it transfer them directly (letting me pick things up from there). The python server workaround plus a little scripting is just a second-best alternative that I can at least have pick up the photos when I’m at home, process them and get them where I want them to go, the way I want them to go.
I really do appreciate your response, and I hope you don’t take my criticisms personally. And I think the Eye-Fi is at the core a great product, for me the “standard” use is just a little… er, invasive… (and lacking in native Linux support for local uploads)
Thanks,
-Tymm
July 1st, 2009 at 3:22 am
Hi Tymm,
Totally makes sense
BTW, if you’re using one of our web-auth partners, like Flickr, Facebook, picasa, etc…, we don’t store your password on our servers. There is a key exchange, and we just store a key that allows us to upload into your account. But I do understand the issue around privacy, user/name password, etc… Today, as you know, the only way to get the card registered is to open an account with us.
Thanks for the feedback — keep it coming.