Setting up your connection

[TheBrew]

(June 22nd, 2010) Good news: The nice people over at Eye-Fi Inc. are letting me make all this setup be much more user friendly!

All you need to do is tap the Options button in the top left corner of the collection overview and choose "Set up Eye-Fi access"! (You have to have Internet access the first time you do this)

Once you're set up, you can open or create a new collection, take a picture and it should arrive. It can take a little while for the card to discover ShutterSnitch the first time it sends an image, so please give it a little time.

You only need to run the guide once - unless you want to switch between cards. Just run the guide when you want to receive images from another card.

If you're having problems, try testing transfers with your computer first, to be sure that there's not anything wrong with the card.

* Having Relayed Transfer enabled is usually the main problem - turn it off (Eye-Fi Center->Transfer Mode->Relayed Transfer). Once the card knows about ShutterSnitch, I haven't had any problems turning the Relayed transfers back on. (Edit: but others have, so just leave it off.. ShutterSnitch doesn't support RT anyway)
* To avoid confusion the first time your card needs to find ShutterSnitch, make sure that the Eye-Fi Center and Eye-Fi Helper is not running - for example by turning off / letting your computer go to sleep.
* You can test if your network devices have access to the Eye-Fi server by going to the address "http://<the IP address of your iProduct>:59278" in a web browser on a computer connected to the same wireless network as your iDevice. Remember: the server is only active when you're inside a collection. If everything goes right you should get a page that says "The Snitch is Listening".

Disclaimer: The built-in Eye-Fi support is based on the work of Jeff Tchang who found out how to talk to these amazing cards. I am not affiliated with Eye-Fi Inc. and you should not bug them if you can't get ShutterSnitch to work with your card - but only if you can't get it to work with the Eye-Fi Center/Helper on your computer.

[slysamonte]

This app makes both casual shooting and doing shoots better! It really is as simple as the instructions. For some reason I though this would be more complicated. Once you get it going it's a breeze to import.

I think two things would be really great to see in future versions.
1. Exporting to the photos for further editing and uploading.
2. Batch emailing / deleting.

And some nice to haves would be
1. getting full access to exif data
2. When photos are geo tagged being able to see the link in the maps app
3. Slideshow function
4. Raw support

Cheers

[Ranger 9]

I agree that it works really well once you understand the logic of how to set it up and what it's for (quick review as you shoot.) I wouldn't necessarily even want to add a lot of features if they would slow it down.

The big limitation is that you can't just squirt your photos direct from the Eye-Fi card to ShutterSnitch. That's what everybody WISHES they could do... although I realize it can't be done because the iPad can't create an ad-hoc network for the Eye-Fi card to join.

What I'm wondering, though: could I buy one of those cheapo battery-powered wireless routers, like the one B&H sells for about $90, and use THAT to create the wireless network in in the field?

[TheBrew]

@ slysamonte :
I'm glad you like it :)

Version 1.1.2 has been in review with Apple since May 4th and adds these feaures:

* The original JPEGs are no longer renamed to .org when they're too big to handle. Instead a .cache file is created. Should make it less painfull to FTP the original files from the iPad to a computer later on.
* Added ability to force the listening info from the Tools button.
* It's now possible to select multiple files when performing editing tasks as superuser.
* Export images to the Photo Album on the device.
* If the device has a camera, you can "import" from that too.
* Added a setting to stay logged in. For those who're comfortable with that :)
* If the Eye-Fi card authentication fails, you will now be notified about this.

I'll be adding more exporting locations in the future, so it'll be easy to transfer pictures to your computer.

I'm also going to be spending some time working on an EXIF/IPTC editing function.

Thanks for the input :)

@ Ranger 9 :

Exactly - bloat is bad :) and all my decisions go through that filter.

Regarding the wireless network - I have a user who has his Nokia N95 running JoikuSpot Premium which acts like a WLAN access point / router. He connects the Eye-Fi card and the iPad through this and has it working just fine. So it's possible - although I'm sure that there's some hardware out there that's limited in some way.

[Jockel]

I just set up an ad hoc network on my jailbreaked iPhone. See WFT-xxx

[monkeygod]

so i haven't gotten any of this hardware/software yet, but i am very curious about it - few questions though :

a) is it possibly to simultaneously upload to shuttersnitch on the iphone and your home pc / eye-fi server

b) eye fi pro supports raw file uploads - if those are uploaded to the ipad, can we use shuttersnitch to ftp them off?

c) without os 4 and background application running, can shuttersnitch be put in a 'fire and forget' mode. that is, i turn it on and pair it with my eye fi card then put the ipad in a bag while it runs

d) there is a jailbreak app that turns the iphone/ipad into a wireless hotspot - would that be sufficient to connect the pad with the eye-fi card?


thanks in advance for any help on this

[TheBrew]

@ monkeygod:

a) No, sorry. The first server that the card finds will be the only server it uploads to.
b) Yup. uploads of non-JPEGs are supported - the app just doesn't display them. And yes, later on you can just log into the iPad and transfer the files off.
c) Yes, that should be doable. You would have to keep the screen turned on though, to avoid having the iPad going to sleep. Turning the screen brightness all the way down should help on the batterylife in this scenario. I'm don't think OS4 will help with this one - but if the possibility is there, I'll program it.
d) As a developer I can't condone JB ..but people say it works yes.

[Ranger 9]

@ monkeygod:

b) Yup. uploads of non-JPEGs are supported - the app just doesn't display them. And yes, later on you can just log into the iPad and transfer the files off.

Okay, I admit it took until now to realize I could connect to ShutterSnitch's directory via FTP! Now that I've done that, I see that my Eye-Fi Pro X2 card has transferred some of my raw files... but not all of them.

Are there any rules/limitations/issues that might determine when raw files transfer and when they don't? Thanks for any info...

[TheBrew]

I don't set a limit no. If you could mail me your Eye-Fi logfile (availbe through the Helper), maybe there's a hint in there as to why this happens.

[Ranger 9]

Thanks, I just ran another test and will email the logfile to you.

This time, NO raw files showed up on the iPad -- even though (if I'm reading the Eye-Fi log correctly) they all were sent OK. Hmmm...

Meanwhile, for extra troubleshooting fun, I tried sending raw+JPEG files to ShutterSnitch from a Nikon D300, using the WT4 remote transmitter. With this setup, all the raw files DID send to the iPad -- so it has to be something about the Eye-Fi card, not about ShutterSnitch's handling of raw files in general.

Anyway, I've explained all my test stuff in the email I just sent you.

Note that I am NOT complaining about ShutterSnitch at all -- I still think it's brilliant, and I am willing to put up with a few quirks considering that this is an $8 application! On the other hand, if the quirks are easy to fix, that would be even better...

Thanks -- jw