Automatically uploading photos solution (auto-photo-upload)
Details about auto-photo-upload project which lets photographers automatically upload photos taken by their DSLR camera straight to Pixelliott.
Pixelliott presents auto-photo-upload GitHub project that allows photographers with a DSLR camera to automatically upload captured photos after they've been captured.
One use-case for this project could be for example, if you are a wedding photographer, then you could show guests captured photos as soon as they're uploaded.
Getting the project to work requires a moderate amount of technical expertise, beware of the learning curve if you don't have much experience with SSH, Linux, Raspberry Pi or Docker.
It works by the DSLR camera communicating with the Raspberry Pi for when a photo is captured. A node v20 script within a Docker image runs to check for captured photos and uploads them to the selected provider based on previously provided credentials.
Assuming that you already have a DSLR camera, the bare minimum to run this project can be built for a low cost, the price of a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W: £14.40, making it suitable for beginners.
The source code for auto-photo-upload is available on GitHub view source code.
Requirements
Here is a list of what you need for this project.
Raspberry Pi We recommend the Raspberry Pi Zero 2W, it's small, has WIFI, is low cost and has low power consumption.
DSLR camera with USB interface and the camera is supported by libgphoto You can find the list of supported cameras here. You will need to look through the large table, your camera must have Additional Abilities with Image Capture.
USB cable between Raspberry Pi USB type and DSLR camera USB type This is to enable fast communication between your camera and Raspberry Pi.
Creator account with Pixelliott The account where your photos will be automatically uploaded. You can sign up for free on the Basic plan.
Internet connection The Raspberry Pi needs an internet connection to upload them to Pixelliott. The easiest option is to connect to Wi-Fi, if you're at home or a venue where Wi-Fi is available. If you're planning on moving around, we suggest getting a mobile connection for your Raspberry Pi, or a more cost effective solution is to bridge the mobile data connection on your mobile phone.
Battery If you're planning on moving around, you will need a battery to power the Raspberry Pi. It's unlikely that you would want it to be powered by the camera battery. If you are using the Raspberry Pi Zero 2W, I would estimate getting a battery of 500 mAH per hour required.
Step by step guide
If you are interested in using this project yourself, I would suggest following blog post Step by step guide to installing auto-photo-upload, which takes approximately an hour to build from scratch depending on experience.
