tmbrown97
Senior Member
Hey guys,
This isn't really HA, but it's in the realm of something a lot of us play with. I'm trying to help out someone I know on coming up with a solution... The cliff-notes version of the project is this: We're looking for a solution that'll let this person manage his library of over 10,000 large digital pictures (10MP, high quality taken with a DSLR) and now he's getting into video. He likes to see his pictures - he likes them on a digital picture frame showing throughout his office (on a picture frame that plays 24x7); and at his home. He's expressed an interest in sharing some of these with his mother as well, by putting a digital picture frame in her house as well. This means synchronizing very large collections of pictures across a WAN without killing bandwidth.
There are some basics about this individual:
He described a scenario today that he wants to do:
While we want to keep this cheaper if possible, realibility is more important than cost. It needs to work 100% of the time. I'm open to buying servers, some dedicated PC's, etc. I can get dedicated bandwidth if needed.
And, I can't take on any software development. I can do some GUI config on a WYSIWYG editor or something like that; but I can't take on weeks of coding. This is just on the side. If we can find someone who specializes in this type of stuff, we're open to hiring them. We'll also need to hire someone to convert all his old tape-based video to a digital format as well.
Thx guys! Anything you can possibly think of would help - I'm really looking for a high-end solution here that's pretty much zero maintenance... If you have more questions, fire away!
This isn't really HA, but it's in the realm of something a lot of us play with. I'm trying to help out someone I know on coming up with a solution... The cliff-notes version of the project is this: We're looking for a solution that'll let this person manage his library of over 10,000 large digital pictures (10MP, high quality taken with a DSLR) and now he's getting into video. He likes to see his pictures - he likes them on a digital picture frame showing throughout his office (on a picture frame that plays 24x7); and at his home. He's expressed an interest in sharing some of these with his mother as well, by putting a digital picture frame in her house as well. This means synchronizing very large collections of pictures across a WAN without killing bandwidth.
There are some basics about this individual:
- He's got the money to spend if he has to (he wants something simple and reliable); but, he's cheap at the same time.
- He has zero patience for missteps; it has to work once delivered
- He has zero technical ability (he doesn't know how to copy pictures from an SD card to his computer)
- He has lots of pictures (over 10,000) taken with a 10MP DSLR; and is now getting into digital video. Right now, we're at 107GB without adding video
He described a scenario today that he wants to do:
- In his livingroom, he wants to put in 3 flat-panel TV's that span the wall; he wants to be able to have one of them showing TV, one showing his home videos just playing throguh, and one showing his pictures streaming through.
- He'd like the flexibility to press a button, or maybe a little touchpad or something - then span the screens, or change the configuration (maybe all off, all random pictures/videos, etc). Maybe a crestron touchpad or something? It'd be nice if he could press the same system and go to his bluray player, or other video sources as well; he has trouble operating all these systems.
- He'd like to be able to hang another screen on his kitchen wall (think super-slim Samsung LED TV on the wall) playing through video/pictures - without sound most of the time.
- He'd like to have a similar solution at his office; probably not the three screens, but maybe a couple on his wall of his office professionally mounted.
- He'd like to be able to put in a stripped down version of a table-top display at his mom's house; not playing everything though - just selected pictures. (I'm thinking a simpler frame that can pull from picasa online, or something like that - just the pictures he flags).
- We need some reliability in here somewhere for backing up his pictures; whether it's a scheduled backup, online, etc.
- We're completely willing to buy a few PC's; I'm just worried about some of the wiring aspects, but I have most of that covered.
- The pictures/videos must stay in their highest quality; he'd like to have his pictures go to a screen possibly 52" at 1920x1080 and have them still look good.
- I personally like Picasa for managing pictures (moving them into folders, naming them, etc) - but I don't know how well it'll synchronize across PC's.
While we want to keep this cheaper if possible, realibility is more important than cost. It needs to work 100% of the time. I'm open to buying servers, some dedicated PC's, etc. I can get dedicated bandwidth if needed.
And, I can't take on any software development. I can do some GUI config on a WYSIWYG editor or something like that; but I can't take on weeks of coding. This is just on the side. If we can find someone who specializes in this type of stuff, we're open to hiring them. We'll also need to hire someone to convert all his old tape-based video to a digital format as well.
Thx guys! Anything you can possibly think of would help - I'm really looking for a high-end solution here that's pretty much zero maintenance... If you have more questions, fire away!