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Save the moments, enjoy the memories
We believe the digital assets should be taken care by ourselves, store locally, backup locally, that is the primary, and cloud backup is the tertiary backup, a good complementary, the price of existing cloud storage is too high, and some of the companies(Shoebox, Canon Irista) doing the business gradually shutdown the services, this is a money losing business, it’s not the efficient way to manage huge amount of assets centralized (flicker CEO’s open letter sent last year confirmed this https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/19/21030795/flickr-pro-smugmug-don-macaskill-open-letter), they have to either make it more expensive, or make you the product. Cloud service is convenient for the user, people don’t need to buy expensive hardware, don’t need to be the professionals to maintain that, don’t need to pay the energy fee to keep it run 24x7, but things are changing, single board computers are getting cheaper, more powerful and more energy efficient, storage are getting cheaper with larger capacity, people are having more and more concerns about the privacy, it’s now viable to host the Photo service, your private cloud, at your own place.
If you haven't heard of NAS before, then NAS will not be your option. NAS is a general storage that can store everything, it also comes with application that can backup and management your photos and videos. Even though some NAS tried to make it easy to use, and make the operating system looks like Windows, but still it's too complicate for non-technical users when they tried to understand what is, think about buy a NAS for your parents and let them setup it up. Take a look at the user guide it's just way too much for a photo back and management. NAS is expensive.
- Synology 2 bay NAS DiskStation DS218+, two-bay NAS disk free($299.99)
- QNAP TS-231P-US Personal Cloud, two-bay NAS disk free($169.00)
- My Cloud Home Duo 4TB ($279.99)
Yes, there are other products which focuses on the vertical market, let user hosts the Photo service locally but simplies the setup and use.
- ibi - The Smart Photo Manager with 1TB storage (**$119.99 **)
- Monument Photo Management Device NO hard drive ($169.94)
- Kwilt3 Personal Cloud Storage Device NO hard drive ($99)
- CatDrive Your Private Shared Memory(out-of-service)
Simple, we are not satisfied with existing solutions.
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Cloud can be the tertiary complementary backup, not the primary, nor the secondary.
- We currently support redandency backup locally
- We plan to support remote backup (like backup to your parents' Lomorage setup) and cloud backup like backblaze.
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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 gurantee compatibility.
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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.
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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 porpular file systems.
- Media files are organized in folders by "YYYY/MM/DD" struture 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.
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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 dozons 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.
- 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' digtal frame.
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Stay connected while independant.
- You can have Lomorage setup at your home, and your parents or your friends can have their own setup. They are operating indendantly, but can talk to each other when necessary, and they can as backup for each other.
The following comparison only considered the biggest selling point for each category, and assuming the main purpose is photo backup and photo management, so if you need more than that, just go with NAS, or get Raspberry Pi 4 or other single board computer to DIY yourself if you are expert.
for example, the cloud service has different price by storage size, there are other features but it actually makes no difference with different storage sizes; And for the self hosting devices, the price differs by the hardware configurations, there are other features but it actually makes no difference with different configurations. Among all the features, backup is the fundamental requirements, and all other fancy features is built on that.
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. If you use the Windows or Mac application, it's $0. There are some features currently missing but they 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?
The following are yearly fees, those cells leave blank are not available, for example, Apple iCloud only provides 5 GB, 50 GB, 200 GB and 2 TB options, for Lomorage, it would be hard to get new hard drive smaller than 500 GB nowadays.
Lomorage software is 100% free for the the essential functions, thus here will only take device cost into account, and yearly cost is calculated as depreciation expense. See below for more details.
| Lomorage | Apple iCloud | Google Photo | Amazon Photo | OneDrive | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 GB | Free | Free | Free | ||
| 15 GB | Free | ||||
| 50 GB | $ 11.88 | ||||
| 100 GB | $ 19.99 | $ 19.99 | $ 23.88 | ||
| 200 GB | $ 35.88 | $ 29.99 | |||
| 500 GB | $ 45.18 | ||||
| 1 TB | $ 54.55 | $ 59.99 | $ 69.99 | ||
| 2 TB | $ 59.18 | $ 119.88 | $ 99.99 | $ 119.98 | |
| 3 TB | $ 66.68 | $ 179.97 | |||
| 4 TB | $ 76.68 | $ 239.96 | |||
| 6 TB | $ 106.68 | $ 359.94 | $ 99.99 (1 TB/person) | ||
| 8 TB | $ 126.68 | $ 479.92 |
Since Lomorage users will use their own hard drive, according to the research published here,
Generally speaking, you can rely on your hard drive for three to five years on average. The online backup company BackBlaze analysed the failure rates of their 25,000 running hard drives. They found that 90% of hard drives survive for three years, and 80% for four years. But this number varied across brands. Western Digital and Hitachi hard drives lasted much longer than Seagate’s in Backblaze’s study.
Assuming the average of hard drive use for 4 years, and setup duplicate backup to ensure safety. So the price for storage price per year will be hard drive * 2 / 4, and Raspberry Pi most likely will last for 10 years, but let's assume you upgrade it for more powerful and efficient one every 4 years like computer, plus the extra USB hub which assuming last 4 years. The equipment cost per year will be (hard drive * 2 + Raspberry Pi suite + usb hub) / 4 , plus the $ 5 energy cost per year, the total cost will be (hard drive * 2 + Raspberry Pi suite + usb hub) / 4 + 5 per year.
The Raspberry Pi 4 Starter Kit includes:
- Raspberry Pi 4 Model B/2GB
- HighPi Raspberry Pi Case for Pi4
- USB-C Power Supply, 5.1V 3.0A
- 16 GB microSD Card
- Aluminum Heatsink
USB hub with power supply:
- Plugable USB 2.0 7-Port High Speed Hub with 15W Power Adapter
- USB 2.0 Powered Hub - 7 Ports with 5V 2A Power Supply
| Hard drive | Raspberry Pi 4 Starter Kit | USB hub | Yearly Fee | Total devices expense | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 500 GB | $ 36.99 | $ 64.80 | $ 21.95 | $ 45.18 | $ 160.73 |
| 1 TB | $ 55.72 | $ 64.80 | $ 21.95 | $ 54.55 | $ 198.19 |
| 2 TB | $ 64.99 | $ 64.80 | $ 21.95 | $ 59.18 | $ 216.73 |
| 3 TB | $ 79.99 | $ 64.80 | $ 21.95 | $ 66.68 | $ 246.73 |
| 4 TB | $ 99.99 | $ 64.80 | $ 21.95 | $ 76.68 | $ 286.73 |
| 6 TB | $ 79.99 x 2 | $ 64.80 | $ 21.95 | $ 106.68 | $ 406.71 |
| 8 TB | $ 99.99 x 2 | $ 64.80 | $ 21.95 | $ 126.68 | $ 486.71 |
It's unfair to compare a NAS with tons of features with dedecated device design for photo, but if you want just the feature related to Photo, why bother NAS if the dedecated device can do better?
| Two-bay Disk Free | Two-bay 4 TB | One-bay 1TB | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lomorage | (Raspberry Pi 4 starter kit + power USB hub) $ 86.75 |
(Raspberry Pi 4 starter kit + power USB hub + 2 x 2 TB) $ 216.73 |
(Raspberry Pi 4 starter kit + 1 TB) $ 120.52 |
| Synology 2 bay NAS DiskStation DS218+ | $ 299.99 | ||
| QNAP TS-231P-US Personal Cloud | $ 169 | ||
| My Cloud Home Duo | $ 279.99 | ||
| ibi - The Smart Photo Manager | $ 119.99 | ||
| Monument Photo Management Device | $ 169.94 | ||
| Kwilt3 Personal Cloud Storage Device | $ 99 |
It's hard.
At this moment, we are making no money.
This is a side project starts with 3 fathers seeking a better solution for the digital assets 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 Freemium. 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 AI search, remote backup etc), and will probably think about monetize some of them. And the digtial photo frame as a dominate screen in the room, there is also possibilities to monetize.