Around 2010 or so, Samsung cameras came with an online service: Social Network Services. It enabled pictures to be unloaded wirelessly to social media with minimum hassle, which back then wasn’t quite as easily accomplished as it is today. Sadly they shuttered the service in 2021, leaving that generation of cameras, like so many connected devices, orphaned. Now along comes [Ge0rG] with a replacement, replicating the API on a $20 LTE dongle.
The dongle in question is one we featured a couple of years ago, packing a Linux-capable computer of similar power to a Raspberry Pi Zero alongside its cell modem. The camera can connect to the device, and a photo can be sent in a Mastodon post. It’s something of a modern version of the original, but for owners of the affected cameras it’s a useful recovery of a lost service.
It’s surprising in a way that we’ve not heard of more hacks using these dongles, as they do represent a useful opportunity. That we haven’t should be seen as a measure of the success of the Raspberry Pi and other boards like it, just as it’s no longer worth hacking old routers for Linux hardware projects, so there’s less of a need to do the same here.
Uploaded not unloaded.
Interesting, but no one uses mastodon… call me when it has a Facebook, X, or instagram endpoint…
Nuf said
it’s a python script, and all those services have python APIs, so you could easily modify it yourself if you wanted to do something helpful. Or you could complain that the person who created a free, useful project (for cameras you probably don’t even own) wrote it for a service you apparently don’t like.
(I guess nobody uses email, either? because it supports that too)
Well, [Ge0rG] does. It’s a good place to follow his hacking endeavors with Samsung cameras.
Don’t be a jerk.
Aren’t there gateways you can set up that mirror your Mastodon posts to those places? I’ve only played with Mastodon a little but I think I remember that being a thing. It actually makes Mastodon kind of universal, no need to write to all those separate APIs.
Twitter started charging for API access a couple years ago, shortly after Ole Musky bought the site but before he renamed it, which in turn drove a lot of useful bots off the service. Mastodon and Bluesky both have readily documented API’s that are easy for proof concepts like this.
I mean as long as you’re ok with your posts being hoovered up to train AI models sure keep using Mastodon. Charging out the ass for API usage is a legit strategy to curb that, unfortunately.
AI is still being trained, as some companies are paying the fee. You also don’t have to use the API to implement a web crawler.
you’re a master baiter, hairy.
Facebook does have a mastodon instance, it’s called Threads. Also other social media platforms are built on mastodon. Truth Social for example.
Mastodon has over 9 Million users, with 1 Million of those as active users. You can see the analytics at the link below.
https://mastodon-analytics.com/
Lol Google+ had more active users that Disasterdon.
“Nuf said”?
Yep, that pretty much narrows you down.
This is fantastic! I have WB150F, ~$20-30 for a 14mp with 18x zoom and useless broken wifi up to today :) With this project wifi not only works again, but actually does what I always wanted (store to local folder).
Does this death of that online service affect Samsung security cameras as well?
Excellent work George! I’ve been enjoying your samsung camera hacking series!