Just back from a Pacific crossing as a crew of 4. With 4 phones, pads and laptops we were faced with the problems of collecting, downloading and sharing pictures and videos. I could have come hove with a lot of cool pictures taken by mye crew mates if we had this little box with us.
Facing this challenge I found that a small server with both
wifi and bluetooth is needed. The bluetooth is important, all phones (almost all) can send pictures and video to a bluetooth receiver (a file server), and no app is needed to be installed. It's far better to use the samba, but then an app is needed.
The
project is now almost done and I can now ask crew to upload selected (at their own discretion). The little server also provide samba (CIFS) for connection to laptops and phones with a samba client installed (or even NFS and sshFS). It also accept RJ45 for Ethernet cable connection.
All of this for about 20 Euro + a large USB stick which turned out to be the most costly part.
For all of us to want to share pictures and videos while on board and disconnected from the world with services like dropbox (in many places the
internet bandwidth is so bad that using dropbox is not even possible) this is a
nice tool.
I have a
project page at :
file-server on board and relevant config files at
github.
Of course once you have a server like this available and on-line there is no end to microservices you can set up. Automatic sync of any memory card put in etc.
The Allwinner H5 is powerful enough to convert pictures and even transcode video.
Best regards,
Ole W. Saastad