Topic: Simple FTP Hardware

[davidmc36]

What is the simplest piece of hardware that I could run to fetch an image from my camera URL and FTP upload it?

[mcrossley]

Wired or WiFi?

[davidmc36]

WiFi is best. I don't have much Ethernet in the house.

What kind of O.S. would an ESP32 be able to handle?

[Bushman]

Pi Zero or an old router with one of the custom FW loads.  Any old router will do. Running OpenWRT or Gargoyle.

[davidmc36]

Kind of what I figured.....hmmmmmm.

So an old router.........is there any stumbling blocks? Specific hardware that WIL NOT work?

I have a D-Link D2FE that I took down when I put in the Fibe connection.

If I did go wired I have a D-Link ethernet router I could try.

[Bushman]

Check the router FW - there are some that limited support.

[galfert]

You already have a Meteobridge. It can do what you are asking.

[davidmc36]

Ummmmmm, we were already through that. It can't take the image with overlay that I want, only the designated plain image.

[davidmc36]

Check the router FW - there are some that limited support.

10-4 Will need to do some checking on that.

[galfert]

Ummmmmm, we were already through that. It can't take the image with overlay that I want, only the designated plain image.

Well your original post was not clear. You said you wanted to pull the image from your camera URL. What you mean is that you want to pull the image from Meteobridge.com to then FTP that elsewhere.

In that case others have already commented with some ideas. But this is a recent thread that you also commented on and I find to be an elegant quick solution, and you mentioned you have the Pi to do it with:
https://www.wxforum.net/index.php?topic=40927.0

Back your your OP you said you want the simplest hardware / software and I think this script with your hardware should check all the boxes. Before dedicating a router to do this think of the overhead that you might be putting on that router hardware in terms of flash storage wear with a constant image refresh. Unless you mount a flash drive or other storage on the router and use that.

[davidmc36]

Saddlebear thread is what made me think of this. Made me wonder if even simpler hardware would work. Yeah, that script should be easy to manipulate.

Camera URL.......figure of speech lol

What do you think of typical router memory? Only good for like 10,000 re-writes or something? I’m not really worried about wearing out a decommissioned router, I have at least two that will never get used otherwise. Maybe “recycle” it instead of buying new card. If they commonly may wear out at some 1000 or so writes, that’s a different story.

[galfert]

Since it is a decommissioned router I suppose then it doesn't matter much. But you could probably put in a flash drive, kill that drive after time, and then replace it and then keep going rather than replace the device itself, decommissioned or not.

Not sure what the life-cycle would be of the router. Another thing that some router firmware can do like OpenWRT is create a RAM disk. It gets erased every time your reboot...but for your use case this might be perfect use of RAM disk and then there is no wear fear and it would also be faster.

[mcrossley]

I'd use a RAM drive too, I also use the RAM drive on my rPi's to reduce flash wear.

But the smallest practical hardware would probably be an ESP32, but you would be into some programming work to get that going.

[davidmc36]

  Some very prodding info there. I remember browsing discussions of RAM Drive.

That should only add a single aspect to work out how to utilizie and a skim of the operating systems seems doable for me.

Getting lean hardware and software solutions running takes a little elbow grease but a lot of tools have been heavy lifted already. 

I suspected the ESP would be more "Hand Flying".

I'll never use the 2.4 only router again. And the wired was a freebie sitting here on the desk staring at me.

Poking around also see there is a need to source certain version of code depending on model of router?

[davidmc36]

Given this is the precise wired router that I have:

https://forum.archive.openwrt.org/viewtopic.php?id=23687

I don't relish trying to make it work.

I guess the Pi is the better choice over any router for power consumption though. The wireless one for sure a power hog.

[Bushman]

The Pi  3 B+ draws 400 ma (2 watts).  Not sure how that can be considered a high draw.  Unless you are running on double AA batteries. 

[davidmc36]

All power hog comments meant for routers, not any Pi.