MyDigitalLife

Configuration of devices

The following figure shows my network configuration.

Details:

  • ZTE H369A
    Router provided by my Phone/Internet/Tv provider
  • PC living room
    My PC in the living room, which I use most of the time.
  • PC music room
    Used to support me in guitar playing
  • laptop
    Used to work in the garden and other locations
  • TV
    To watch tv and  YouTube and as a display for: DVD player, Media Player, Receiver and PC living room.
  • Digital tv box
    Provides tv channels and apps (like YouTube) to watch on the TV.
  • Media Player Dune HD TV303D
    To watch video’s and listen to music.
  • NAS Synology DS-216j
    Used to:
    Synchronize data between computers
    Make back-ups
    Have access to my files from anywhere in the world
  • Mobile devices
    Two smartphones and two tablets

What do I do using this configuration:

  • Organize, edit and watch Photos
  • Organize, edit and watch Videos
  • Organize and listen to Music
  • Keep information on things that I own(ed)
  • Gather information about vacations
  • Gather information about events

Router ZTE H369A

Nothing much to say about this, except that settings are required to allow remote back-ups to/from the NAS.

PC living room

This is our PC on which I do most things:

  • Software Development
    As a hobby programmer I work on a Java application called ‘MyWorld’.
    I’m currently making this available on GitHub, piece by piece.
    The user documentation can be found under MyWorld user manual.
    The design can be found under MyWorld Design.
  • Music
    I have quite a big music collection on the PC. The MyWorld application has a ‘database’ with my information about music. It also supports synchronising music files to the Dune mediaplayer.
    More information on the page Music.
  • Photos
    I have a large collection of photos, mainly from hollidays.
    On the PC I organize my photos, I edit them, create photo shows (with the MyWorld application) and view them on the TV (via an HDMI connection).
    More information on the page Photos.

NAS

Main uses of my NAS.

  • Synchronize data between computers
  • Back-ups
  • Make my data available wherever I am

Synchronize data between computers

With Synologie ‘Cloud Station Drive’ you can synchronize data between your computers. This is very handy if you, like me, use different computers.
Use a number of Shared Folders to be flexible about what you synchronize to which computer. For example: your personal documents you want to have available on each computer, but your photos and video’s probably don’t fit on your laptop. See the page Disc structure for a description of the disc structure I use.

Back-ups

There are many ways to create back-ups. One thing to keep in mind is that when you make back-ups on different devices in your own house, that when your house burns down you may still lose everything. There it’s best to make back-ups in the cloud or e.g. on the NAS of someone you trust. Therefore my children and I each have a Synology NAS. I back-up on the NAS of my daughter, she backs-up on the NAS of my son and he backs-up on my NAS.
For this we all use Synology ‘Hyper Backup’.

Make my data available wherever I am

On our phones and tablets we use the Synology app ‘DS file’, with which it is possible to access files (download and upload) on the NAS wherever we are (as long as we have some network connection).