Den

Travel Autorsync

Iteration 1

Traveling tends to ignite my passion for capturing moments, resulting in a plethora of photos and videos. However, the digital hoard demands substantial disk space, rendering cloud storage impractical due to the high costs associated with terabytes of data. To tackle this, I invested in portable hard disk drives (HDDs) and established a Network Attached Storage (NAS) system using single-board PCs. I carry one of these setups during my travels for immediate access to my media files, while the other acts as a home-based replica.

Initially, I utilized Resilio Sync for my synchronization needs. However, I soon discovered its incompatibility with MIPS architecture, which was crucial as some of the travel routers I use are powered by MIPS CPUs. The ability to maintain a backup during travels using a travel router with USB connectivity proved to be immensely convenient.

To host the local replica, I employed a minimalistic OrangePiZero running Armbian.

For the remote replica stationed at home, I opted for a BananaPi. A notable advantage of the BananaPi is its capability to support not only USB disks but also direct SATA disk connections.

Initially, I experimented with Resilio Sync (a.k.a Bittorrent Sync) for synchronization, but it required a memory capacity that exceeded what the OrangePiZero (with its 256MB of memory) could provide, also it didn’t work well on MIPS routers and I have issues running it on OpenWRT ARMv7 router. Consequently, I reverted to the tried-and-tested rsync.

I scripted a setup through configure-autorsync.sh, which facilitates the installation of a system service to replicate files from the OrangePiZero to the BananaPi. autorsync script also sends Telegram notifications when it starts and finishes. To establish a network among the OrangePiZero, BananaPi, and my laptop, I utilized tailscale.

On the OrangePiZero, I also operate a WebDav server for easy file access..

On my laptop, the transfer-dcim script automates the media transfer from my Sony camera, DJI Mavic, and GoPro to the local replica.

I also explored running PhotoPrism on the BananaPi to better organize my media files, enriching my media management system.

Iteration 2

I setup syncthing on both single-board PC to enable 2-way synchronization. Now