PicApport PhotoSync

What is PicApport PhotoSync?

Due to the spread of smartphones, many organizations, families and businesses have more and more photos stored on various devices such as cell phones or tablets.
The challenges associated with this are, for example, making one's own pictures available to others (in high quality) in an uncomplicated manner and protecting the pictures from data loss.

Almost all cell phone manufacturers offer the option of storing photos in their cloud, but for many users this is out of the question for a variety of reasons:

• Families want to keep full control over their private photos.

• Companies want to manage their images in compliance with the GDPR.

• Cloud services are very often chargeable.

• Cloud services rarely offer the option of making images easily accessible to other people.

• There are certainly many other reasons why people want to keep control over their own photos.

PicApport PhotoSync is an app for Android and iOS that allows you to transfer photos taken with your cell phone or tablet to your home PicApport photo server conveniently and, if you wish, even fully automatically.

PicApport takes care of a reasonable and freely configurable folder structure of the photos on the server. Metadata such as photo titles or tags are already conveniently captured on the cell phone and assigned to the images.

Events such as a family celebration or a customer visit can be defined with title and tags for a limited period of time even before a photo is taken.
All shots in the time span of an event are then fully automatically synchronized with title and tags to the PicApport server.

What do I have to consider when configuring my PicApport server so that PhotoSync works?

Setup is quite simple: PicApport Server must be updated to at least version 10.2 and PhotoSync must be enabled in the server configuration.

How to do this is described here: Configure the PicApport Server for PhotoSync

Which permissions and operating system version does the app require on my phone?

Android

The following permissions are required:

• Authorization to access photos, media and files.
  This is self-explanatory.
  
  
• Authorization to access the device location.
  This authorization is necessary so that PicApport PhotoSync can access the SSID of the current WLAN.
  Of course PicApport PhotoSync also works without location access. However, no restriction to a specific SSID can then be configured.

Supported operating system versions: Android 5.0 (API 21) or higher

 https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.contecon.picapport.photosync

iOS

The following permissions are required:

• Authorization to access photos, media and files.
  This is self-explanatory.
   
• Authorization to access the device location (Data protection / Location services / Location Background)
  This authorization is necessary so that PicApport PhotoSync can access the SSID of the current WLAN.
  Of course PicApport PhotoSync also works without location access. However, no restriction to a specific SSID can then be configured.

Supported operating system versions: iOS 11.0 or higher

https://apps.apple.com/de/app/picapportphotosync/id1573767755

The following screenshots describe the individual pages of the app with their functions

Just click on the screenshots to enlarge them

The configuration of the app

When you start the app for the first time, the configuration dialog is displayed automatically.

To get PicApport PhotoSync working, the following information has to be entered in the configuration dialog:

• Address of the PicApport Server
  
  

• The optional API key if it has been enabled on the PicApport server.
  If you have not assigned an API key, simply leave this field blank.

  (see also: webapi.apikey on PicApport Web-API)
  
  
• UserID and password of a PicApport user who has the permission to upload files.
  (see also: PicApport - Usermanagement)

Select albums

In order to prevent unwanted photos from being synchronized (e.g. from WhatsApp, email or other apps),
you can configure which albums should be synchronized.

The main page (home page) of the app

As soon as the configuration has been completed successfully, the start page appears when the app is started.

Synchronization state

Synchronization is possible

Synchronization currently not possible because e.g. no connection to the server

There are configuration problems e.g. wrong password

Connection state

Connection to PicApport Server established

No connection to the server (because e.g. disabled or the configured network is not available)

Start PicApport

Starts the web interface of the configured PicApport server

Edit event

The definition of an event controls the fully automatic synchronization. All photos that are stored on the cell phone and whose shooting date is in the specified time period are automatically marked for synchronization with the configured metadata (title and tags). As soon as a connection to the server is established, the photos are transferred.
It does not matter whether the photos are stored on the cell phone via the camera, WhatsApp or email.

Examples:

• You are invited to a wedding.
  As an event, the wedding is defined even before you leave home, with expected end.
   

• You want to back up all cell phone pictures fully automatically:
  You define an event that lasts several years and use as title e.g. "Photos from my phone".
  In addition, you configure the connection so that photos are only transferred in the home WLAN.

If the PicApport PhotoSync app is not active in the background during the specified time period of the event or no connection to the server is possible, the synchronization will take place afterwards as soon as the app is activated or a connection to the home PicApport server is established again.

Synchronize

On this page, photos can be manually marked for synchronization and metadata such as titles and tags can be assigned.

After selecting one or more images, the "Transfer to Server" button takes you to the menu for assigning the title and tags (the definition of the tags available for selection here is done via the "Edit Tags" item in the Control Panel menu).

The current synchronization status of each photo is graphically displayed on each thumbnail (see screenshot or description below).

The processing of the synchronization jobs starts automatically as soon as you leave this page and a connection to the server is possible.

The meaning of each icon is explained in the following screenshot:

Transfer state

• nothing
  The photo is not marked for transfer.
  
  
• blue
  The photo has been marked for transfer to the PicApport server either manually or by event definition, and optionally tagged with metadata such as title or tags.
  As soon as a network connection to the server is established, the app will try to transfer photos in blue state.
  The blue state can also be reset manually via the Metadata dialog.
  
  
• red
  There was a problem when transferring a photo in blue status. The PhotoSync-App will try again to transfer the photo.
  If this works at some point, the status will be set to green.
   
• green
  The photo, including metadata, was successfully transferred to the PicApport server.
  
  
• yellow
  The photo was already on the server and will not be transferred.
   

• grey
  The photo was deleted from the PicApport server using the SyncApp's delete function (after it was already transferred).
  It will not be transferred again until the status gray is reset and the photo is marked for transfer again.

  In order to be able to delete a photo on the PicApport server with the PhotoSync-App, the user must also have the corresponding delete permission.

• blue ton
  The photo has been marked for deletion on the PicApport server.
  
  
• red ton
  There was a problem when trying to delete a photo through the app on the server. (e.g. the image was already deleted through the PicApport web GUI).
  Now when the delete function is clicked again, the user can decide if the sync status should be reset.
  Then the image can be transferred once again.

Note: Once tags have been set, they can only be changed via the PicApport web interface after synchronization has taken place. Subsequent changes to the tags remain without effect if synchronization has already been performed. However, images and videos can be deleted from the server via the PicApport Syncapp as described in the screenshot above and synchronized again with changed tags.

Connection

Here you control if and to which networks PicApport PhotoSync should connect.
Especially with mobile devices, you only want to transfer photos when you are connected to a WLAN in order to save data volume.
To increase data security, you usually only want to allow synchronization if you are logged into a known, secure WLAN.

The following options can be selected:

• Enable Upload
  Only if a check mark is set here, photos are transferred to the PicApport server.
  IMPORTANT! When transferring photos over the cellular network, charges may be incurred by your cellular service provider.
  
  
• Upload with Wifi only
  Upload only happens when you are connected to a WLAN.
  
  
• Upload only in Wifi with the SSID of the Wifi (WLAN)
  Can be used to perform uploads only in the home WLAN, for example.
  The current versions of the cell phone operating systems only allow access to the SSID if the app Location Access has been allowed. In addition, location services must be enabled. Unfortunately, we as app developers have no influence on this.
  The PicApport SyncApp does not access GPS data of the cell phone but only the current SSID.
  Of course PicApport PhotoSync also works without location access. However, then no restriction to a specific SSID can be made.