Auto backup of SD card to Dropbox using FlashAir

[karmann]

I tried searching but couldn't find what I'm after exactly.

Just wondering if anyone has attempted to automatically backup their SD card to Dropbox or similar using a FlashAir WiFi capable SD card connecting directly to the internet in infrastructure mode or similar. This should be possible without having to manually instigate it from a PC each time like Flashpap does so well.

Would be great to be able to do this and then whenever you want to analyse info through PC software then the data is available without having to place your SD card in the PC or manually copy it.

Seems to be less of an issue now that I can see my AirSense 10 stores months or more of data rather than the 1 month I was led to believe initially, but would still be handy.

[eseedhouse]

I tried searching but couldn't find what I'm after exactly.

Just wondering if anyone has attempted to automatically backup their SD card to Dropbox or similar using a FlashAir WiFi capable SD card connecting directly to the internet in infrastructure mode or similar. This should be possible without having to manually instigate it from a PC each time like Flashpap does so well.

I doubt you could fully automate it, there's not much smarts inside a small card for that, though it does have a web server. I just use flashpap and have it set to that it goes straight to my Dropbox.

I still back it up on several other hard drives anyway. Decades of IT help desk makes me very paranoid about backing stuff up. Good thing too, since I did manage to nuke the directory from my Dropbox once.

[Crimson Nape]

I realize that your question is directed at FlashPAP but I thought I'd throw this out here. I use Sleep Master in lieu of FlashPAP. It has an option to perform a scheduled download. If Dropbox (I don't use it) acts like Google Drive and provides a directory listing in Explorer, then you could setup your home computer to automatically download the data to it. Again that is assuming that you have a home computer that is always connected.

[karmann]

I tried searching but couldn't find what I'm after exactly.

Just wondering if anyone has attempted to automatically backup their SD card to Dropbox or similar using a FlashAir WiFi capable SD card connecting directly to the internet in infrastructure mode or similar. This should be possible without having to manually instigate it from a PC each time like Flashpap does so well.

I doubt you could fully automate it, there's not much smarts inside a small card for that, though it does have a web server. I just use flashpap and have it set to that it goes straight to my Dropbox.

I still back it up on several other hard drives anyway. Decades of IT help desk makes me very paranoid about backing stuff up. Good thing too, since I did manage to nuke the directory from my Dropbox once.

Unfortunately I'm not able to posts links just yet but if you google 'flashair dropbox' you will find a page on the flashair developers website talking about LUA scripting which seems to allow you to write a script that runs on the Flashair SD card and perform functions such as copy files, etc. So it is surprisingly quite a powerful tiny device.

I am just as paranoid with backups and do similar

[karmann]

I realize that your question is directed at FlashPAP but I thought I'd throw this out here. I use Sleep Master in lieu of FlashPAP. It has an option to perform a scheduled download. If Dropbox (I don't use it) acts like Google Drive and provides a directory listing in Explorer, then you could setup your home computer to automatically download the data to it. Again that is assuming that you have a home computer that is always connected.

The method I'm looking to use is not using FlashPAP at all, mainly because I can go weeks without using my Windows PC sometimes so an automatic upload to dropbox without intervention seems quite appealing to me.

[AlanE]

If your computers remains on, you can initiate FlashPap through the task scheduler (Linux has cron). Even if you are not logged on. That's what I do with mine. You have to setup FlashPap one time to set the IP of your FlashAir and where to copy the data and after that, using parameters (arguments), it runs unattended.

Every morning at 9am it runs FlashPap with parameters user=Alan exit=yes. Copies my CPAP data to my local SD card. I could just as easily have it copy to my dropbox though.

user is the profile in Sleeyhead
exit tells FlashPap to exit after it transfers.




There is no easy way to do it with LUA scripting because LUA on Flashair is limited due to the memory available to run scripts. Flashair doesn't support the complete LUA library. You can use LUA_SD_EVENT=/myscript.lua which triggers after every file write but I'm not sure it will trigger after an existing file is modified. As karmann wrote LUA can upload files to dropbox but it would attempt to upload every file every time and could become a painfully long process as you get more data on the card.

Hmm FlashPap on a Raspberry PI. Then you can just leave the PI on the rack and forget about it.

[karmann]

Thanks for the detailed responses. As mentioned, I can go weeks or more without switching on my PC so that's why I was looking for a solution to go direct from FlashAir to the Dropbox cloud service. But I will take another look at Flashpap.

[eseedhouse]

Thanks for the detailed responses. As mentioned, I can go weeks or more without switching on my PC so that's why I was looking for a solution to go direct from FlashAir to the Dropbox cloud service. But I will take another look at Flashpap.

Well the machine has the "smarts" to upload data to the cloud, because it does that every morning to Resmed's servers for MyAir. But it uses the cell phone system, not WIFI and does not connect to the internet which it would need to be connected to send to DropBox.