FTP and HTTP Server Services for Amiko A3

[T134]

(These Apps will be available for install from the A3 Appstore.)

Today I tested out FTP & HTTP servers for Amiko A3. For those who do not know, these run on the A3 just like an internet server. Simply put they provide more ways to transfer files and media to/from your A3.

For both of these I went for simple yet functional. Anyone should be able to install these from the A3 Appstore and have services up and running in minutes. They are really too simple to even require a guide.

FTP
The FTP Server App provides a basic, fast way to transfer files between the A3 and your computers. Android does not have FTP support by default which is why I was searching for FTP Apps and came across this one. I think all I did was setup a username and password and choose root for home directory.


FTP Server on the Amiko A3.

Accessing A3 FTP using Filezilla on Win7 computer.

SimpleHTTPServer
This is a neat little function to have. It effectively turns your Amiko A3 into a webserver. For this one you choose a home directory and turn it on.


HTTP Server App running on A3

Accessing the A3 VIA HTTP in Firefox browser.

You can go through in your browser and click on movies or pictures or whatever and your browser will prompt you to open or save just like a website. Click and play with VLC or WMP or whatever you want to do.

What is really cool about the HTTP service is that if you dump an index.html in the home directory when you go to the IP and port for your A3 it will give you a webpage. You could make yourself a really nice browser based media server out of this.

Bonus for advanced users
If you really want to go to the extreme and you know how to do it you can setup port forwarding in your router for either or both of these services. This would allow friends, family or yourself to pull media and put files on the A3 from anywhere in the world where you have internet access.

 

[Dee_Ann]

Very cool and useful.

Can you tell us, is the ethernet port on the A3 gigabit or the much slower old 100 Mbit/s ?
I was extremely dismayed at the many, many hours it would take to move big multi-gigabyte recordings from my home theater PC into my mac and replaced everything with gigabit in my house.

Thanks.

 

[T134]

I had to wait and catch an engineer on Skype this morning/night to check this. I only have 100M ethernet here so could not check myself. It is 100M. I don't know of any FTA STB's offhand that have 1 Gigabit, I don't think even a $600 dreambox has it.

 

[Dee_Ann]

Oh well. It is what it is...
I can just set up my mac to retrieve files from it when I’m asleep.
As long as I do it every night and keep the disk in the A3 empty it shouldn’t be a problem.

Thanks..

 

[T134]

Throw a 2Tb SATA in the A3, it will take awhile to fill up

 

[Cham]

So you can open a port on your local router and access your A3 via the web gui remotely? Will be easier than using FTP I suppose. Been doing that with the azbox for a while but never got around to installing httpd on it.

I find it odd the newer hardware doesn't come standard with gigabyte ethernet.

I do find using cat6e stp cable speeds up the 100m ports just a bit, maybe 10% or so over the cat5... that is if connected to a gigabyte switch/router.

 

[T134]

So you can open a port on your local router and access your A3 via the web gui remotely? Will be easier than using FTP I suppose.

Yup easy to do and I even built a front end for it so it is more friendly for others to use rather than just a directory structure. For file transfer I actually prefer FTP. Seems faster plus it is a good way to put things on the box. HTTP only allows download from the A3.

 

[Dee_Ann]

Throw a 2Tb SATA in the A3, it will take awhile to fill up

I found out the hard way that that’s not the best way to roll. I had a 2tb disk in my Dish Network STB and had a year’s worth of videos recorded on it, stuff that I really, really wanted to keep.
Then the disk failed and I lost a whole year’s worth of recordings. I was not a happy camper.

After that I replaced the failed disk with the cheapest, smallest disk I could find, a 160gb disk and I bought a hauppage DVR gadget.
I plugged the Dish STB into the DVR so it can record to my Mac now. And since the disk is small it forbids me from hoarding like before.
Now I will record things but watch them quickly and delete them rather than keep them. I use the DVR mostly just to grab clips of things I like but pretty much never record entire shows with it because they are BIG files.

On the A3 I would rather stick with this theme and use a small disk and offload it nightly so it doesn’t fill up. There’s not much I care to record on FTA except Harvey Toons on PBJ and IF RTV survives and ever actually airs the classic Doctor Who series, I would like to record those too. I’m not holding my breath on that though, RTV, IMO is on life support on it’s deathbed. It’s just a matter of time.
There are things on PBS that I will want to record for certain, much good stuff there!

On OSX I can use Automator to create scripts/tasks to automatically download and clean out the A3 every night when I’m sleeping. I figure a nice little 80gb disk for $20 from Amazon should do nicely.
On the other hand, I need to put a few more 4tb disks in my Mac..

I’m really looking forward to my new A3 !