A self-hosted open source photo management service that serves as a backend for the android client uhuruphotos.

so what?

Well uhuruphotos is what was missing from all selfhosting photo galleries

A fast and beatufull google photos alternative

It caches photos so there is offline view for cached items

Fast image loads means a well writen app and a.well writen librephotos api

Fast scrolling and thumbnail loads on time feed

Project page

backround info

Its been for a long time that google had provided an excelent service for free.

Unlimited cloud storage for photos at a fair analysis / size (16mp).

Its been a while that they have changed their charging policy and limited the storage to just 15gb at user have to pay above that li.it.

So the need for an android app that can sync with self hosted gallerries and be as good as google photos in displaying photos timeline

and providing helpfull features like photos on map and face tags arise.

There where already good selfhosted softwhare around , great projects like photoprism , photoview AND librephotos but with a major flow.

There was no android app.

Well to be more precise photoprism and librephotos have android apps but are proof of concept project incomplete and unusable.

That means you only have a webui.

Progressive web apps are OK for certain jobs but not for images galleries.

Photos are not cached and lag is furstrating as everything gets reloaded all the time

What we’ll walk through

• How to get librephotos server running on your raspberry
• Basic requirements for securelly remotely access your librephotos server
• Auto upload photos from phone to raspberry
• Auto categorise photos in your gallery folder by year,month,day
• Auto scan and import photos from your gallery folder with librephotos
• Setup Uhuru photos

requirements

• Open ports on your router 80 and 443 and port forword these ports in to your raspberry Lan ip

That is specific to your router model and requires that your router is not behind a Nat by your isp

• A free dynamic subdomain from a provider e.g. duckdns

Navigate to http://www.duckdns.org/

For quick signup use oauth from the provider list e.g. github

On domains use a subdomain name e.g. “libre” and click add domain . now your domain is https://libre.duckdns.org

and it will link to your raspberry

To auto audate it use a cronjob

*/5 * * * * sleep 38 ; curl -s "https://www.duckdns.org/update?domains=libre.duckdns.org&token=your-duckdns-token"

Your duckdns token is on your duckdns acount page

• A web server to reverse proxy requests from the dynamic subdomain IP to the localhost port librephotos is running and handling SSL certs

For installing caddy web server and how it handles SSL read.my blogpost here

In our example all you need to do is edit the Caddyfile

nano /etc/caddy/Caddyfile

add

libre.duckdns.org { reverse_proxy localhost:3000}

To it

And restart caddy

sudo systemctl restart caddy

Assuming your domain is libre.duckdns.org and librephotos is running in 3000 port

• Docker and docker-compose plus python

To install docker on raspberry

>curl -fsSL https://get.docker.com -o get-docker.sh

Then

>sudo sh get-docker.sh

To install docker-compose

sudo pip3 -v install docker-compose

Guide

get librephotos server running on your raspberry

Link

Clone the repo

git clone https://github.com/LibrePhotos/librephotos-docker.git

CD to the folder

cd librephotos-docker

Copy .env template

cp librephotos.env .env

Edit it

nano .env

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# Location of your photos.

myPhotos=/run/media/user/TOSHIBA/photos/

The photos folder filepath e.g. assuming you store your photos on an external Toshiba drive

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# Comma delimited list of patterns to ignore

skipPatterns=.json

If you have file types you want to skip scan

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# The location where you would like to store the log files. The full path must exist as it will not be created for you.

logLocation=/run/media/user/TOSHIBA/uhuru-logs          

Again I use my external drive as the logs location to be stored

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# Protected media directory. This is where we store some files like the thumbnails of your images.

proMedia=/run/media/ippo/TOSHIBA/media

Thumbnails folder again on external drive

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# Where shall we store the cache files.

cachedir=/run/media/ippo/TOSHIBA/cache

Cache files , same

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dbLocation=/run/media/ippo/TOSHIBA/uhuru-db

Database filepath , same

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# Username for the Administrator login.

username=user

Your username

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# Password for the administrative user you set above.

userPass=pass

Your password

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# Secret Key. Get one here https://rb.gy/emgmwo (Shortened random.org link)             

# Secret Key. Get one here https://rb.gy/emgmwo (Shortened random.org link)

shhhhKey=globefish-goes-here

Generate a key from the link and paste here .used to encrypt the db

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#What port should Libre Photos be accessed at (Default 3000)

httpPort=3333

Just use an available port on your raspberry You can scan for used ports with nmap

sudo nmap -sT -p- 192.168.1.x Where 192.168.1.x your your raspberry lan ip Use a not used port

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# Get a Map box API Key https://account.mapbox.com/auth/signup/   
# Get a Map box API Key https://account.mapbox.com/auth/signup/

mapApiKey=pk.yourmapboxkey

sign up at mapbox and get an api . mapbox is optional and alternative to google maps

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# What branch should we install the latest weekly build or the development branch (dev)

tag=dev

Choose your branch latest (weekly) or dev (rolling)

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# You can set the database name. Did you know Libre Photos was forked from OwnPhotos?

dbName=librephotos

Your dB name

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# Here you can change the user name for the database.

dbUser=docker

DB username

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# The password used by the database.                              

dbPass=pass

DB password

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# Number of workers, which take care of the request to the api. This setting can dramatically affect the ram usage.     
# A positive integer generally in the 2-4 x $(NUM_CORES) range.
# You’ll want to vary this a bit to find the best for your particular workload.
# Each worker needs 800MB of RAM. Change at your own will. Default is 2.

gunniWorkers=2

Number of workers that handles api requests (talk with the android client

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# Number of workers, when scanning pictures. This setting can dramatically affect the ram usage.
# Each worker needs 800MB of RAM. Change at your own will. Default is 1.

HEAVYWEIGHT_PROCESS=2

Number of workers that handles the photo scans I found fit for my RPI400 to use 2 workers for both cases

Start containers

The docker-compose.yml is filed with our env vars from the .env file you can review it

cat docker-compose.yml

Run the containers as daemons

docker-compose up -d

App is available at localhost:3333 or otherwise specified port (default 3000)

note that librephotos api needs the folder contaning the ohotos to have 7 permissions for others

sudo chmod 777 -R ~/photos is what i did

Update images

CD to librephotos-docker folder and Stop containers

docker-compose down

Pull the new images

docker-compose pull

And re-compose

docker-compose up -d

some remarks

For face classification you’ll have to access the webui tag some pics and name some faces and then train it

then you can verify/add from the infered tab

Auto import from phone to an import folder and then auto organise them to folders by year month day and move them to at image library . Then scan our library with librephotos

periodic postgres backups (snapshots) and restore

create a folder to store the backups

mkdir db-backup

cd to the folder

cd db-backup

Grab postgres container id

docker ps

e.g.40b12de38945

Backup

the command should look like:

docker exec -t your-db-container pg_dumpall -c -U your-db-user > dump_$(date +%Y-%m-%d_%H_%M_%S).sql

your-db-container is the postgres contaimer id

your-db-user is docker in .env

unless it was changed

A file like dump_20-11-2022_00_55_26.sql is created

Restore

cat your_dump.sql | docker exec -i your-db-container psql -U your-db-user -d your-db-name

again

your-db-container is the postgres contaimer id

your-db-user is docker in .env unless it was changed

your-db-name is librephotos in the .env unless it was changed

so in our example the command should be

cat dump_20-11-2022_00_55_26.sql | docker exec -i 40b12de38945 psql -U docker -d librephotos

add the backup command

to a crontab and take db snapshots @daily , @weekly etc

e.g.

crontab -e

@weekly docker exec -t 40b12de38945 pg_dumpall -c -U docker > /path/to/where/you/save/your/backups/dump_$(date +%Y-%m-%d_%H_%M_%S).sql

another idea is to scan periodicaly the db backup folder and delete very old backups to keep size at a minimum

you can do this with find , ntime and rm

e.g.

find /path/to/where/you/save/your/backups -type f -mtime +30 -exec rm -f {} \;

this will delete entries older than 30 days in that folder

auto import from phone

note that the android app aims to add auto upload but atm it is not available. the bellow procedure will be unnecesery when auto upload becomes available

needs a webdav server e.g. webdav nononsense docker image. Read my “webdav” post about running a webdav server on raspberry

here

create a folder named photoimport and chmod 777 it

For syncing I use foldersync android app it is a paid app but its the best for the job and you can sync with the full featured

free version just fine if you can stand some adds

Also the Dev can provide app licence for 3 devices outside the playstore for devices without google services

worth the money

Link

app settings

On foldersync android app add account select webdav add your webdav ddns https url , username and password

On folderpairs add a pair

In general tab

On local select your dcim folder

On remote select photoimport folder

On sync type sect “to remote”

On scheduling tab enable scheduled sync daily

On sync options tab enable sync subfolders

On advanced tab enable retry sync and disable temp file scheme Also on “one way sync options” enable “only resync source if modified (ignore target deletion) As we are gonna move the files from target folder (photoimport folder) to our photo gallery after we organise them with exit tool.

On conection tab as desired but i guess it makes.sense to sync only.on wifi

On notification enble all

auto organise with exif tool

download and install exiftool for unix from

https://exiftool.org/index.html

cd

gzip -dc Image-ExifTool-12.42.tar.gz | tar -xf -

cd Image-ExifTool-12.42

perl Makefile.PL

make test

sudo make install

The exiftool command should be like

exiftool '-Directory<CreateDate' -d /destination/directory/%Y/%m /source/directory

we can create a script that runs this command

Later we will call this script in a crontab

directly executing exiftool in crontab fails

So

nano exiftool-photos.sh

and paste

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#!/bin/bash
sudo /usr/bin/site_perl/exiftool '-Directory<CreateDate' -d /run/media/ippo/TOSHIBA/photos/%Y/%m  /run/media/ippo/TOSHIBA/photoimport;

Added a hashbag in the beginning of the script and calling the full path of the exiftool executable

Then create a cron job

export VISUAL=nano; crontab -e

And paste

# Every day at 2 AM 0 2 * * * bash /home/ippo/photos-exif.sh

Or the full path of where ever your script is

Autoscan server for new photos

The docker command is

sudo docker exec --user root CONTAINER_NAME python3 manage.py scan

CONTAINER_NAME is the librephotos backend you can get it with

docker ps

it should be

brephotos-docker-backend-1

in this case the command is

sudo docker exec --user root brephotos-docker-backend-1 python3 manage.py scan

We can create a cron job to regularly call this command

Create a new crontab with nano

export VISUAL=nano; crontab -e

And paste

# Every day at 3 AM 0 3 * * * sudo docker exec --user root brephotos-docker-backend-1 python3 manage.py scan >/dev/null 2>&1

timeline

• Our photos are transfered directly from our phone to the photoimport folder as long as we are connected to WiFi (or any network)

• organised to y/m/d and moved to image library every day at 2

• image library scaned from librephotos everyday at 3

Android app

Uhuruphotos GitHub project link

As stated there

The app is currently in closed beta on the Google Play store. You have to Contact the Dev on twitter for access and playstore link.

Twitter link

*update:

for installs uotside the playstore apk releases are available at github

About the app

While still early days, it already has a lot of features:

• Photo feed with multiple views which can be changed by pinch to zoom gestures

• Multiple select in feed to share/delete multiple items at once

• Periodic background synchronization with LibrePhotos server

• Photo details view with information like date, location, gps map, people view, sharing, adding/removing

from favourites (synced with LibrePhotos server)

• Video details view with all the above features and video playback

• Search your photos using LibrePhotos’ search engine. Get search suggestions based on your photos.

• People view and suggestions for people with most photos.

• Photo map. See a heatmap of your photos. Navigate around the globe with the interactive map and see photos taken

in the location currently viewed.

• User created and auto generated albums from LibrePhotos

• Dark/Light mode (manual and auto)

• Tablet support

• A lot of settings to help you control the app storage and memory requirements along with how frequently to perform synchronization

with the LibrePhotos server.

• up to 2GB of images cache

• up to 2GB of video cache

• Fingerprint authentication to lock the app

As mentioned above, a lot of features will soon be implemented before the full public release, mainly:

• Local photo support. This will make UhuruPhotos a viable Google Photos alternative which can be used as your primary camera roll viewer.

• Backup/Sync local images with librephotos server. Take control of your data by never having to worry about photo backups.

• Basic photo editing capabilities.

• Biometric authentication

all you need to access your photos is your dynamic dns subdomain through which you access your server libre.duckdns.org in our example the libre photos user name and password as provided in the .env file when composing it