-
-
4. Why Lomorage?
-
-
Simple, we are not satisfied with existing solutions.
-
-
-Cloud can be the tertiary complementary backup, not the primary, nor the secondary.
-
-
-- We currently support redundancy backup locally
-- We plan to support remote backup (like backup to your parents’ Lomorage setup) and cloud backup like backblaze.
-
Easy to setup, easy to use, easy to upgrade, zero maintenance.
-
-
-- It only takes a few minutes to install the prebuild OS image on Raspberry Pi.
-- We support backup to Windows and MacOS as well with one single application.
-- software upgrade automatically.
-- System migrate automatically to guarantee compatibility.
-
Software matters, it need to be solid to take care of those invaluable assets.
-
-
-- We are the user, we eat our own dog food.
-- We release by quality not by date.
-
It should be open, avoid any kind of lock down, the user should easily migrate to other systems, and should not get a electronic waste if the product is out of service.
-
-
-- Media files are stored as it’s on your disk, original format, original resolution, exactly the same.
-- You don’t need format your hard drive to use it, and it supports all popular file systems.
-- Media files are organized in folders by “YYYY/MM/DD” structure on disk, you can easily import them to other systems/tools.
-- The setup use Raspberry Pi, even if you don’t use Lomorage, it’s still a single board computer you can use in tons of projects.
-
More than backup and management, enjoy the memories with your families.
-
-
-- How many times you open photo APP and take a look the old photos?
-- Have dozens of photo frames but hard to find enough space for them?
-- Have idle digital photo frame which requires copy/paste files, limited in storage?
-- Think about having a large screen digital signage in your living room which shows weather, news, digital arts and selected photos, and several other smaller digital photo frames in your bedroom or study room which shows your personal photos and videos. No more copy/paste, break the storage limit and use WiFi to retrieve photos from Lomorage.
-- Reuse any idle screens to build digital frames with wireless connection using Raspberry Pi, customize the content on your Phone.
-- share your kids photo to their grandparents’ digital frame.
-
Stay connected while independent.
-
-
-- You can have Lomorage setup at your home, and your parents or your friends can have their own setup. They are operating independently, but can talk to each other when necessary, and they can as backup for each other.
-
-
-
5. What is the cost?
-
-
Lomorage is more cost efficient and more flexible compared with existing solutions, the software cost you nothing, and even get the hardware setup using Raspberry Pi 4 is cheaper compared with existing solutions. If you use the Windows or Mac application, it’s $0. There are some advanced features currently missing but are planned, and the basic backup feature is solid and stable for almost 2 years, no hidden fees, no lock down, no privacy concern, why not give it a try?
-
-
See here for comparison with cloud service, NAS and other solutions.
-
-
6. How comes the name “Lomorage”?
-
+
How comes the name “Lomorage”?
If you know what Lomography is, then “Lomorage” is just a combination of “Lomography” and “Storage”.
-
-
7. What is the business model?
-
-
This is a side project starts with 3 fathers seeking a better solution for the digital assets for the family and we are doing that in spare time, we have been doing this for two years. We started this with love and build it with love, and we use it in our daily life, we do spend a lot of time on that, but we know we probably will do this even nobody is paying us, because that is what we need, and the way we do this doesn’t cost us much, the only thing we paid for now it’s the apple developer account and a domain name, we don’t host the storage, we don’t offer the device, we host website and software download at github for free, so the answer why it’s free it’s because we can.
-
-
Nothing is free, and need to make money to make it sustainable, we wish we can do that full time to get the features delivered faster, but we just can’t at this stage. We will be happy if people find the product useful and willing to spend money on that, for now the product is at early stage with basic features like backup and share, and we provide that as freeware. We don’t have to make user part of the products, and we care the privacy since day one because we are ourself the user.
-
-
Peter Thiel said: “To build a successful startup, you have to be 10 times better than second best.”, and we also believe: to make money out of something, we need to build something that is valuable first.
-
-
We are planning to release more advanced features (like advanced search, remote backup, digital frame etc), and will probably think about monetize some of them. And the digital photo frame as a dominate screen in the room, there can be multiple ones, for example, a big screen in living room and some smaller ones put on desks in bedroom or study room, there is also possibilities to monetize.
-
-
8. How to setup redundancy backup?
-
+
What is the cost of Lomorage?
+
Software is free, and user can buy hardware according to their needs, you can use Orange Pi Zero which will cost you less than $20. Check here for more details on cost for different configurations. No hidden fees.
+
How to setup redundancy backup?
If you are running Lomorage service on macOS (Windows haven’t support yet), you can open the settings window of LomoAgent application, and set the redundancy backup there.
-
If you are running Lomorage service on Raspberry Pi, you can plugin in a new disk drive, and open iOS client APP, go to settings tab and set the redundancy backup there.
-
-
9. What file systems supported?
-
+
What file systems supported?
If you are on Windows or macOS, then you can use whatever file system supported by Windows or macOS.
-
If you are on Raspberry Pi, it supports “vfat exfat ext2 ext3 ext4 hfsplus ntfs fuseblk”.
-
-
10. Why the date time seems not correct?
-
+
Why folders named with date time seem not correct on hard drive?
The date time used to store on the system is in UTC, not the time of local timezone, the reason is that the photo can be taken in different timezones, and the user may travel or relocate to different timezones, to simplify the processing, we use UTC timestamp, and it can easily convert to different timezones on the APP.
-
-
11. How to set a secondary backup?
-
+
How to setup a secondary backup?
There are several options to setup a secondary backup, check this blog for more details.
-
-
12. Does Lomorage support backup edited file?
-
+
Does Lomorage support backup edited file?
On iOS, if photo is edited, system will store the original photo, the edited one, as well as the editing operations, Lomorage will store ONLY the edited photo. For edited video, system will store the video before last editing, the editing operations as well as the edited one, and Lomorage will ONLY store the edited video.
-
If you would like to store the file before editing, make sure you have backup the edited one first, and then you can revert the editing in Apple’s “Photos APP”, and then upload those files before editing.
-
-
Notice: The old iOS client (<0.6.10) doesn’t support edited files, so if you have error when uploading the edited files, please delete old client and reinstall the new one, instead of upgrading to new version, to make sure the old problematic database is removed.
-
-
13. What is background backup?
-
+
What is background backup?
Background backup means you don’t need to open Lomorage app to backup the assets.
-
Background backup on iOS is not expected to work the same way as iCloud, Apple restricts 3rd party tools to run in the background. Currently there is only two hacks to trigger Lomorage running in the background, one is background fetch, which might be triggered when system is idle, another one is triggered when significant location changes, that is why background backup requires location permission. Both won’t last long and can only run in background for a limited time.
-
Moving Lomorage app into background, the existing upload is still running in the background but the next upload has to wait either it’s back to foreground or the above two hack condition triggers the upload.
-
-
-
+
How to recover from Raspbian boot failure?
+
Don’t worry, your Photo are stored on hard drive, and the database is backup to hard drive as well. You just need to recovery the backup database.
+
+- plugin in your hard drive to PC, and you can find that assets.db in each user’s Lomorage home directory, they are exactly the same.
+- reinstall Lomorage Raspbian image.
+- attach hard drive to Raspberry Pi.
+- copy assets.db from one user’s Lomorage home directory on hard drive to
/opt/lomorage/var/ on Raspberry Pi.
+- restart Lomorage service on Raspberry Pi:
sudo service lomod restart.
+
+
This applies to Armbian setup as well.
+
I forget password, how to reset?
+
Don’t worry, you can alway reset password by running /opt/lomorage/bin/lomoc user reset [user name] [password] at Linux. username is username reset for, and password is new password you like to use.
+
And if you are using Mac LomoAgent, you can reset user’s password in user list by clicking “Users” menu.
+
For Windows, you can download the command line tool here, open cmd
+run below command line, replace “your_user_name” and “new_password_in_clear_txt”:
+
cd c:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\lomoware\Lomoagent\lomod\
+lomoc user reset –db “c:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\lomoware\var\assets.db” your_user_name new_password_in_clear_txt
+
What can it do besides photo backup and management?
+
Lomorage is focus on photo backup and management and our current goal is to make it easy to use, stable and reliable. But we are using a customized open Linux platform, so if you need some of those features on expensive NAS, you should be able to install the alternatives, for example you can install Transmission for downloading, and Jellyfin for media center, samba share is enabled by default for backup other files.
+
What is the size of storage?
+
Lomorage relies on external storage and supports all types of hard drive and flash disk.
+
Can it connected with multiple hard drives?
+
Yes, but you need powered USB hub to support multiple hard drives.
+
Can I use spare hard drive?
+
Yes, you don’t need reformat the disk to use Lomorage, and it supports all major file systems(FAT32, NTFS, EXT etc).
+
Does it support hard drive sleep?
+
Yes, once no activity on hard drive, it goes to sleep mode automatically, and will wake up once you access the hard drive。
+
How to install?
+
Connect hard drive via USB, connect ethernet, power on, and download Lomorage APP.
+
How to view the backup photos?
+
You can use Lomorage APP on iOS or Android, or you can use the Web APP, or you can access via samba, or even access the hard drive directly. We also have Android TV APP.
+
Does it support remote access?
+
Yes, you can use 3rd party reverse proxy tunnel service(like ngrok), or you can set port mapping on router.
+
Does it support export from backup to Phone?
+
Yes, currently works on iOS, you can “Save” those backups locally, and local will keep a copy, if you save it locally on multiple devices, you will have multiple copies and delete the copy won’t delete the original backup.
+
In case you haven’t found the answer to your question please feel free to contact us, we will be happy to help you.
-
-
- 
+ 
+ 
+ 
+ 
+ 
+
+
-
-
- 
+
+
+ 
+
+
+ 
-
-
- 
-
-
- 
+
+
+ 
+
+
+ 
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ 
+ 
+
- 
-
-
-
@@ -220,7 +213,6 @@ 
@@ -211,11 +205,8 @@ 
@@ -250,7 +241,6 @@ 
@@ -215,7 +207,6 @@ 
@@ -220,23 +213,18 @@ 
-
- 
+
+ 
-
- 
+
+ 
+
+
+
+
+
+
