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Month: August 2016

Uploading photos to Flickr from Eye-Fi card with Raspberry Pi

Uploading photos to Flickr from Eye-Fi card with Raspberry Pi

Helsinki Hacklab’s policy for photographing sometimes puzzles our guests which might come from other hackerspaces with limitedly allowed or strict rules for taking photos, for privacy reasons or some others. Back in 2014 we still had very scattered collection of photos by individual members, maybe hosted on their own homepage or somewhere else, until lost forever. To preserve our history better and and have more up-to-date content online, we decided to make both taking photos and publishing them as hassle-free as possible. So we bought then an Eye-Fi card along with our camera and configured it so that all photos are automatically published in Flickr anytime the shutter recloses. So far, no complaints.

kuva kamerastaBut now, Eye-Fi has announced shutting down its service, which we have used for uploading over 4000 photos during the last 18 months. The X2 product line (and some other models) that are affected by this shutdown have still been sold in 2015. First card we had, a 4GB SanDisk branded version, failed this summer, but luckily one member had an unused X2 Connect somewhere, so we were soon back posting more photos of our weekly activities and blurry accidental snapshots of our feet. But, to continue using this Wi-Fi SD card after the service shutdown, we needed a replacement solution for both getting the photos from the card and sending them into our Flickr photo albums – and maybe making some improvements too.

RaspberryPi 3 in our tele rackWe had just received a bunch of Raspberry Pi 3 boards and tried to figure out what we could do with them, and because model 3 had Wi-Fi capability, connecting to Eye-Fi card could be done using eyefiserver2 project. For Flickr upload, I chose using Flickraw library for Ruby, which seemed to be a well-maintained project, so that possible future changes in Flickr API should not be a problem.

First, eyefiserver2 process is started on startup, this gets the photos from the card into RasPi, then every 5 minutes a Ruby program is run, which uploads new photos and marks them published.

The project (or step by step tutorial) can be found in Github:
https://github.com/HelsinkiHacklab/eyefi_flickr_auto_upload

We previously had all our photos ordered in albums by their date. One thing I wanted to improve was to put photos taken between 0 am and 3 am in same album with photos taken on the previous day, which makes less time line discontinuation when viewing photos by start date of an event. The Ruby program also by default renames photo titles by their timestamps. See our Flickr page for results.

In our setup, the RasPi is connected to Internet using Ethernet, and only the Eye-Fi card’s internal network name and password are stored in known wireless networks. If the camera is used outside our Hackerspace, and there is an Ethernet port for the RasPi available (maybe shared from a computer), we should be able to keep publishing photos from ongoing events, happenings, fairs etc. as we usually do. This is different from Eye-Fi center we previously used, in which we configured the card to know new local Wi-Fi and its password. This task required someone (which is me) to have Eye-Fi Center program first installed, and was usually a dull and slow thing to do during ongoing event or buildup. Now we just have to remember to take the readily configured RasPi with us anywhere we go with the camera.

If you don’t have an Eye-Fi card and would like to build a similar auto-publish system, I can’t say if it’s a good idea to buy an aftermarket Eye-Fi card anymore. Configuring this setup requires user to obtain card specific information that might need Eye-Fi services to be available (you cannot login to or create a new Eye-Fi center account after Sep 16th). If you have the card, but don’t really know what to do with it after Sep 16th, go enable its internal wifi (direct mode network) and store the password and MAC address for possible later use while you still can. If I’ve understood correctly, also the current Eye-Fi product line does not offer Flickr publishing. Try googling “hacking transcend wifi sd” for more ideas. Check out FlashAir API guide https://flashair-developers.com/en/.

(2016-09-01) Yesterday Eye-Fi announced a new tool for older cards, which might help to get card Wifi and MAC information after Sep 16th, which are needed this for python server solution.

CNC-peruskurssi järjestetään syksyllä 2016

CNC-peruskurssi järjestetään syksyllä 2016

syksy2016_cnc-kurssin_kuva

CNC-peruskurssi on kaikille kiinnostuneille avoin ja maksuton kurssi koneistuksen alkeisiin. Kurssin aiheisiin kuuluu mm. koordinaatistot, jyrsintätyökalut, G-koodi ja käsinohjaus.

Kurssi järjestetään syyskuun aikana ja sen lopussa oppilaat pääsevät tekemään oman opinnäytetyön Lotta-koneella.

Kurssitiedotus ja -aikataulu discoursessa

Voit käydä ilmoittamassa kiinnostuksesi kurssiin tai tiedon osallistumisestasi yllämainitussa keskustelussa.

Tulevaa toimintaa ja kesällä tapahtunutta

Tulevaa toimintaa ja kesällä tapahtunutta

Tulevaa:
Analogielektroniikka II
, keskiviikkoisin alkaen 17.8.
Kurssille suunniteltu kahdeksan kokoontumiskertaa.

Assembly Summer 2016

Robokisa, Turun vuoro yrittää
Robokisa, Turun vuoro yrittää

Hacklab.fi oli koko Assembly-tapahtuman ajan paikalla omalla ständillään Skrolli-lehden, Pelimuseon ja Kasettilamereiden seurassa. 3D-tulostetut Pikachut muodostivat kärsivällisesti odottavan joukon yleisöä pöydän taakse – harmillisesti toinen erä meni pilalle sähkökatkon vuoksi.

Yhdessä Skrollin kanssa järjestetty 4k-reso -compo keräsi mukavan määrän osallistujia. Voiton otti 4TV tekijänä ivory labs, ja koko kisan tulostaulukko löytyy tapahtuman sivuilta. Kesän robottitapahtumasta tutut sokkelorobotit pitivät pienen kisan Helsingin, Turun ja Kuopion välillä.

Tiistaina Assemblyn jälkeen läbillä kävi yhteensä yhdeksän vierailijaa tutustumassa toimintaamme, eli jotain ehkä osasimme tehdä tällä kertaa oikein.

Kuvia tapahtumasta omalta osastoltamme löytyy Flickristä.

Muuta kesän aikana tapahtunutta

Metallityötilan rakentamista on edistetty ikkunoiden osalta, ja tilaan on tehty muutamia uusia pieniä hankintoja.

Helsingin kaupunginmuseo hankki kokoelmiinsa Johannes Rantapuskan teoksen Useless Exercise, jonka toteuttamisessa Helsinki Hacklab avusti kesällä.

Hacklab.fi Assemblyssa

Hacklab.fi Assemblyssa

Puuhanurkka rakenteilla keskiviikkoiltana

Hacklab.fi on tänäkin vuonna mukana Assembly-tapahtumassa Messukeskuksessa. Saman Puuhanurkan alueella on myös mm. Skrolli-lehden ständi, Lamerit ja Pelimuseon arcadet.

Hacklabit tuovat mukanaan muutamia kesän robokisan sokkeloroboja, 3D-tulostimen, projekteja ja paljon muuta nähtävää.