Photos

I want to store photos. GDrive is ok but expensive. iCloud is more of a sync service and could be pain later on (as apple is).

Tried photoprism. It’s nice with all mainstream features. It’d need a storage server. After quite some research, backblaze felt like a good fit at 6$/mo/TB. Good price.

Current setup: browser -> photoprsim -> backblaze

Photoprism is hosted on oracle cloud always free arm instance.

Above setup is for non sensitive photos. Something that sharing with oracle is not a very big problem. I need something for private / personal. They cannot be on the same server.

Recently heard of tailscale, good vpn service. I could setup personal wireguard but that’ll require another vps (because cgnat). As wireguard is e2e, I could use tailscale instead of a vps for wireguard.

I’ve a Raspberry Pi.

Idea:

Browser -> tailscale -> raspberry pi (photoprism) -> backblaze

Q: Why not an SSD with raspberry pi ?
A: I’m trying out backblaze. If I directly connect SSD, I’ll have only one copy of my photos on SSD. Not a good idea. Right now, I’ve an SSD and backblaze. Not enough for 3-2-1 rule. Perhaps, I’ll get an HDD for offsite backup, but that’s for later.

Pricing / month / 200GB⌗

Here’s how it compares for increased storage:

Tried photoprism for a few days. Then wanted to share a library. User creation is paywalled. I can create user from cli though. Still, sharing to one specific user with a link looks tricky. Public link is good.

Looking for this, I found immich. Instantly loved it ! The UI is so clean. Installed immich on raspberry pi. Keeping thumbnails locally on rasp pi and originals on backblaze.

Mount with rclone:

rclone mount b2:/rick-private-photos bb2 --vfs-cache-mode full --allow-other --daemon

Different thumbnail dir:

    volumes:
      - ${UPLOAD_LOCATION}:/data
      - ${THUMB_LOCATION}:/data/thumbs

It’s easy to set this up as systemd unit in case of reboot. Here’s my config.

The iOS app is fantastic. It has ability to choose different server url on home wifi. So,
Home wifi -> directly connect to rasp pi
Internet -> Use tailscale IP for rasp pi

This keeps my immich server non exposed to the internet.