Photo Sync / Digital Photo Frame / TV

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I use SyncThing for everything. But my photo’s so far are hidden away in a folder. I want to enjoy them and thought how can I implement a solution using my existing SyncThing setup?

TV: For Televisions I consider purchasing a Android TV stick with 32 GB memory and download SyncThing for Android. Anyone have tried this before? Will this work?

Digital Photo Frame with WiFi: Are there specific photo frames that support SyncThing? Or run some type of open source software to run SyncThing on?

Any suggestions related to this? Or use some special ‘photo’ management solution?

Right now I use SyncThing for anything. I even have a VPS running SyncThing on it for my backup needs.

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I try to understand what you want to do. I suppose to use an AndroidTV as an image player. And you would use Syncthing to sync the files to a folder within the Android. As an image player, there are many. I used to use Kodi and Libreelec. For synchronization always check SD write permissions in android, for syncthing. If it is an old version like andro 4.4 there is no problem, from now on, you must give the permissions

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Just for clarification, if you want to sync into an SD card, then the Android version needs to be either 4.3 and below or 11 and newer. Anything in between won’t work unless Syncthing is run as root.

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Sorry to correct you. I use several hundred android tv as advertising players. They all run on 4.4.4 and 4.4.2 with RK and Amlogic processors

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It’s not supposed to be work in the stock Android 4.4 as per Google (e.g. see https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/36989780). If it does, I’d assume it may be due to using non-standard configuration by the specific device manufacturer.

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I have never used root for syncthing in any version from 4.4.4 downwards

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I use an app on my TV, firestick, and Android TV called Kodi. It can connect to Windows shares and access photo directories. With Samba on Linux, (NFS too, ) you can share out the pictures folder. Kodi Its like a multimedia center viewer program and you can link it to windows and show videos and pictures on your TV among other things that it can do but this is what you are looking for and it can do that. Kodi Can also link to a Google drive and show photos that way.

Kodi has a nice picture viewer interface and will let you browse and show pictures on your TV.

I have this installed and running so I know it works. Although I’m running a syncthing on windows and not Linux but Linux should work too you can share files with windows over SMB.

I just checked my computer my tv and Cody also supports NFS file systems if you know how to set that up.

I can assist anyone with connecting Kodi to a Amazon TV or Android TV and connect it to Windows SMB shares anyway.

To choose the folder in Samba to share in the configuration file, you need to edit the smb.conf file. The smb.conf file is located in the /etc/samba directory.

To edit the smb.conf file, you can use a text editor such as nano or vi. Once you have opened the smb.conf file, you need to find the section that starts with [share]. This is the section where you will define the share that you want to create.

In the [share] section, you need to specify the following information:

  • path: The path to the folder that you want to share.
  • comment: A comment that describes the share.
  • browseable: Whether or not the share should be visible in the Windows Network Browse list.
  • guest ok: Whether or not users can access the share without a username and password.
  • read only: Whether or not users can only read files in the share.

Once you have specified all of the required information, you can save the smb.conf file. Once you have saved the smb.conf file, you need to restart the Samba service. You can restart the Samba service by running the following command:

sudo service smbd restart

Here is an example:

[share] path = /home/samba/share (Your pictures folder) comment = Samba Share browseable = yes guest ok = yes read only = yes

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I am looking for a plug & play solution that works on different types of TVs.

I travel allot so when I enter an AirBNB for example, I want to plugin the device in the TV on HDMI, and it plays my photos from my SyncThing folder. And no need to copy new photo’s each time manually to a device or struggle with the menu settings depending on the TV I plugin the device.

Good to know it needs to have Android 11 or above if running SyncThing.

The Kodi solution seems nice, but as I travel I wonder if this is the best option if it relies on a NFS or network share.

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#1

typically hotels provide you with Wi-fi I’ve never stayed at an Airbnb do they have a requirement to provide you with Wi-fi to make this work in the first place?

If you need a non Wi-fi solution that will work on any TV get a large flash drive and sync the files pictures from your computer to the flash drive and plug it into the TV most smart TVS today have usb ports on them and if they don’t you can use the HDMI port with a fire stick 4K and a flash drive. What you’re trying to do is not difficult there are a couple of different ways to go about it. If you know that Wi-fi is going to be there absolutely then you can sync photos from your phone to your computer and from your computer to the fire stick you use Kodi. Piece of cake.

If you have your photos or movies on your laptop, and the Firestick travels with you too, Kodi will be able to access every photo that you have in your shared folder on your laptop So long as they are both on the same wifi network. If you create a share on your laptop called pictures and on the fire stick you configure Kodi to look for your picture folder on your laptop. Kodi can browse the local wifi network and find your PC and folder automatically. I have Kodi running on my living room and bedroom TV (Firestick 4K). they can access my shared music videos and pictures from both rooms.

Kodi can Configured with your laptop name and picture folder and look for it via universal plug and play. I just did it in my living room as a demonstration to make sure that I’m telling you the right thing. Any pictures I add to my computer now will automatically be available in Kodi, So long as the laptop and the firestick on the same Wi-fi network.

If you have a Firestick 4K you can also add additional storage via USB and an OTG adapter. If you sync all of your pictures to the flash drive you can plug it into the fire stick regardless of whether they’re on wifi or not and all of your pictures will be available on your TV. Kodi can access the external flash drive directly.

Those are two simple methods.

I’m going to take a while guess and say that perhaps you use sync thing to sync pictures from your cell phone to your laptop when you travel?

You can’t use sync thing to synchronize from the pictures folder To the flash drive but you can do that with a program called free file sync. Get a one terabyte flash drive for $20 and you can put a gazillion photos on there and plug it into the firestick 4K which fits in the palm of your hand along with the flash drive plugged in. The required OTG adapter is $5 on Amazon.

You could save yourself a lot of time and effort by simply casting your phone screen to the firestick that’s plugged into the tv in the hotel and look at your pictures just like you would do on your cell phone and only it’ll be on the big screen. I use an app from the Amazon app store called AirReceiver. you can cast an Android phone or an iphone to a firestick with that software.

You might want to go with an Android TV stick rather than an Amazon fire stick that way the Google Play App Store is already on the device whereas it’s not on the fire stick. If you attach external storage you might be able to run sync thing on there too i’m not sure i’ve never tried running syncthing on my T. V.

Hopefully this made things less confusing. Kodi will search the network by computer name not necessary to know what the IP address is.

let me know if I need to clarify anything that is confusing or overwhelming because it does not need to be.

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