DreamPlug and iPad?

[RAC]

Has anyone used this with the iPad? It has 2 x USB, an SD card slot and WiFi.

I am wondering whether it is possible to connect the iPad to this via WiFi and use something like iSSH, on the iPad, to copy files (photographs) from and SD card to a portable (USB) hard drive.

I would also be interested to hear whether anyone has used this device with FileBrowser. If so, what file shares are available, 2 x USB + SD possibly?

 

[RAC]

Based on further investigation of my own, I am going to take the plunge andvbuy one.

 

[mach5k]

let us know. USB sticks and cards sometimes get a warning that they need too much power. the operating system limits the power consumption of what is plugged in, but would be great if works.

 

[Videographer]

Please forgive me for my ignorance here, but I have done a bit of research, and I have come up with a bit of a blank. What, in affect, is this little devise used for? All I can get out of what I read is that it plugs into a wall jack and serves as a web browser/server. Is this correct? If one had this, would one still have to have an Internet provider like Cox Communications etc., our does this replace these providers and give you the service free. Again, sorry for the ingnorance. Thanks for your help.

 

[RAC]

let us know. USB sticks and cards sometimes get a warning that they need too much power. the operating system limits the power consumption of what is plugged in, but would be great if works.

Yes, they have mentioned that I might need to use a powered USB hub. I hope not because part of the attraction of the device is portability and having to carry a USB hub around would not please me.

I am also investigation whether I can instal XServer so that I can make use of the XServer client that comes with iSSH. I will content with plain old SSH though.

Delivery has been a bit slow, possibly due the disruption to traffic caused by the Chilean volcano. It's definitely on its way and I should get my hands on it early next week.

 

[RAC]

Please forgive me for my ignorance here, but I have done a bit of research, and I have come up with a bit of a blank. What, in affect, is this little devise used for? All I can get out of what I read is that it plugs into a wall jack and serves as a web browser/server. Is this correct? If one had this, would one still have to have an Internet provider like Cox Communications etc., our does this replace these providers and give you the service free. Again, sorry for the ingnorance. Thanks for your help.

I am interested in this device to overcome the lack of USB ports and an SD card slot on the iPad, because of it's portability and low because of its low power consumption (so that I can leave it turned on and ready to go).

Specifically, I want to take with me when I travel and use it to back up photos from SD cards to a USB hard drive.

This device is a Linux computer and can act as a file server. Linux commands can be issued through iSSH (on the iPad) to copy files from say an SD card to a USB drive. I expect to be able to FileBrowser to do this too, but it would copy files over wireless (much slower) and doesn't support filtering or wild cards very well.

It can also function as a wireless hotspot so that if you find yourself with only Ethernet available you can still connect the iPad to the Internet.

I know that are cloud solutions for this these days but I still like to use a physical backup device.

 

[RAC]

Well it arrived and seems to work as advertised.

I can use iSSH to copy files from an SD to a portable HDD. I use a Numbers spreadsheet to generate the Linux commands and copy/paste them into iSSH.

FileBrowser can see any devices that are plugged and various types of files can be viewed.

I think that XServer is lurking in there somewhere, but I haven't managed to get iSSH to connect to it yet.

To summarise, the connectivity that the DreamPlug brings includes WiFi, 2 x USB (low power unfortunately), 1 x SD, 2 x Ethernet, 1 x eSATA.

 

[RAC]

More information after more experimentation.

I had no problem running a Perl script, originally developed on a Netbook, to copy files from a camera SD card to a portable HDD. The script checks all files in subdirectories of the DCIM directory, copying only new files and splitting JPEG and RAW files into separate subdirectories at the destination.

Compared to copying the same files (over WiFi) using FileBrowser, it is 5 to 10 times faster because all the action is internal to the box. FileBrowser can of course be used to view photos, movies and documents stored on the HDD.

There is a reasonable text editor called nano for editing Perl scripts. Think there are some iPod apps that allow the editing of text files as well.

I am also using a USB "Y" cable that allows power for the portable HDD to be drawn from both USB ports. The HDD I am using seems quite happy on just one USB port but another drive that I have was not.