Autocopy digital camera images

Insert memory card and wait for the ‘ready’ notification. Wouldn’t that be easy?

Auto copy images from your digital camera
Want an easy way to auto-copy images from your memory card to your PC?mac-mini

Problem
Take a picture: memory card is full. Now you have to take out the card, go to your PC, start up the PC, insert the flash-card, copy files, take out the card, shut down your PC.

Solution
With a combination of programs and a script these steps can be minimized. This can be done without looking at the screen of your MAC.

  • Turn on your Mac
  • Insert memory card
  • Wait for a ‘ready’ notification
  • Take out memory card

How?

  • Make sure your Mac is connected to your picture network shares, even after reboot or wake-up. (not applicable if you want it to sync with a local directory)
  • DSW application runs an Apple script based on the memory card name.
  • The apple script (see screenshots below)
    • copies all files from the memory card to a (network) location, not overwriting existing files.
    • Ejects the memory card so you can safely remove it
    • Sends a push notification to my iPhone

PictureCopy_script_01_m PictureCopy_script_02_m PictureCopy_script_03_m
click on these images to zoom in

Download

NOTE: If this doesn’t work for some reason, please check-out the software called “Hazel“.
NOTE: Check out this post on this subject if you don’t want to use the Automator
NOTE: Alternatively use the Chronosync software which (apparently) can do the same thing ($40)


Ultimate Media Player: Plex

One of the fanciest and easiest to use Media Players I have ever seen.

This is a media player with an incredible WAF*

logo_plex

Links

Great resource showing how to use your Mac Mini as a Media Center (Dutch).

* = Wife Acceptance Factor

 


Put your Mac to sleep: remotely

Make your Mac go to sleep remotely, for example by having Homeseer execute a script

Waking up your Mac is easy using Wake On LAN (for example: in Homeseer using the PHNetwork plugin). Now you want to put your Mac to sleep again. How?

First you have to connect to your Mac using a script without having to enter a password manually. Otherwise you couldn’t run it form Homeseer without having to enter a password.

1. Connect to your Mac

Non secure: Connect using SSH. Command:
putty -l <username> -pw <password> <ip_address>

Secure: using Putty: instructions
NOTE: when you edit the authorized_keys file, don’t forget the space before and after ‘ssh-rsa’.
   NOTE: remember the name_of_saved_session. You have to use this in step 3.

2. Putting Mac to sleep

One solution is to execute the ‘shutdown’ command: shutdown -s now
Problem: you have to enter your admin password. When using sudo you also have to enter your admin password.

Solution: osascript -e ‘tell app “Finder” to sleep’      (tip from jordanbalagot.com)

3. Combining both

Now you can connect to your Mac and put it to sleep. How to combine both?

1- Create a file “sleepmac.txt” in the directory that contains putty.exe. (or any other directory)
2- Edit “sleepmac.txt”
3- Add: osascript -e ‘tell app “Finder” to sleep’

If you used the secure option in Step 1:
4a- Create Homeseer event: Launch Application
      C:\Putty.exe -load “<name_of_saved_session>” -m C:\sleepmac.txt

If you used the non-secure option in Step 1:
4b- Create a Homeseer event: Launch Application
      C:\Putty.exe -l <username> -pw <password> <ip_address> -m C:\sleepmac.txt

Other info:

– Putty FAQ


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