sony-pm-alt (BNutz Edition)

Transfer pictures wirelessly for Sony cameras without using PlayMemories (Sony PM Alternative)

BACKGROUND:

For a full technical breakdown - please see the readme in the original repo this project was forked from. It has an excellent write-up on how everything works and communicates together:

• https://github.com/falk0069/sony-pm-alt

In my situation - although I was able to register my cameras to the PlayMemories app on my Windows PC - I was never able to get the Wi-Fi Import / "Send to Computer" functions to work.

The cameras would always time-out with the message:

Connected to the access point. Cannot connect to the computer to be saved.

This project allows me to bypass PlayMemories Home completely and directly send photos from my cameras to my docker-enabled NAS as soon as I get home.

This "BNutz Edition" adds some extra Docker environment params to more easily set the python script options inside the container.

Tested with:

• DSC-RX100M4 (Firmware 2.0)
• ILCE-7M3 (α7III - Firmware 3.10)

PREREQUISITES:

As described in the original Linking The Camera And The PTP-GUID section - you first need to register the GUID of a PC or Mac against the camera(s) so that the cameras know who to accept connections from.

Once registered, you can then emulate this GUID to "trick" the cameras into sending the photos to your target destination instead via gphoto2.

To register a GUID onto the camera, you can either compile and use the sony-guid-setter tool (i.e. Method 2), or extract the GUID after linking the camera to an existing PlayMemories Home installation (PM Home can be uninstalled after the GUID is retrieved).

Since Method 1 in the guide didn't work for me, I ended up using Method 3; using Wireshark:

STEPS

1. Install PlayMemories Home desktop application and connect the camera via USB as normal.

2. When the camera appears in the app, click into its menu and select the Wi-Fi Import Settings option

3. Follow the prompts to get the camera registered.

   • For a proper step-by-step on this bit, see the official PlayMemories guides:
   • How to use (Windows) - Import Section
   • Importing images to your Mac (Wi-Fi)

4. Once registered, disconnect the camera off the USB and make sure its Wi-Fi settings are set up to join your network properly as well.

5. On the computer, start up Wireshark and set it to monitor port 15740.

6. On the camera, run the "Send to Computer" option and let it run.

7. If all is well, you should see some activity in Wireshark after a few moments. Look in the first few packets for an entry that resolves to: Init Command Request GUID: (0000 hex string ffff) Name: COMPUTER-NAME

   Where COMPUTER-NAME is the name of your computer on the network, and (0000 hex string ffff) is the registered GUID of your computer. Save the hex string for use below.

DOCKER:

docker run \
    --name=sony-pm-alt \
    --net=host \
    -e PTP_GUID=<computer GUID in hex format> \
    -e GPHOTO_ARGS=<gphoto2 arguments, comma-separated> \
    -e PUID=1000 \
    -e PGID=1000 \
    -e SAVE_TO_DATE_FOLDERS=false \
    -e DEBUG=false \
    -v <path to incoming photos folder>:/var/lib/Sony \
    bnutz/sony-pm-alt

DOCKER PARAMETERS:

Default Parameters	Function
-e PTP_GUID="ff:ff:52:54:00:b6:fd:a9:ff:ff:52:3c:28:07:a9:3a"	Computer GUID in hex format. Default is the value set by the sony-guid-setter tool
-e GPHOTO_ARGS=--get-all-files,--skip-existing	Comma-separated arguments to pass to gphoto2. See the gphoto2 manpages for more
-e PUID=1000	Set UID for downloaded files
-e PGID=1000	Set GID for downloaded files
-e SAVE_TO_DATE_FOLDERS=false	Move downloaded photos into folders sorted by date taken (yyyy-mm-dd)
-e DEBUG=false	Set debug logging
-v /path/to/incoming/photo/folder:/var/lib/Sony	Path to photo download folder on host machine
-p 15740/tcp	PTP/IP port (only needed if using bridge networking)
-p 15740/udp	PTP/IP port (only needed if using bridge networking)
-p 1900/udp	SSDP port (only needed if using bridge networking)

TROUBLESHOOTING:

SSDP

• Check that your container is able to receive SSDP packets - run the container with the param -e DEBUG=true and then monitor its log output by running:

docker logs -f sony-pm-alt

• With the log running, run "Send to Computer" on your camera and see if the log produces any output after the camera connects (You may need to wait several minutes for anything to happen).

• TIP: As a control - it's worth also checking with another device on the network to see what SSDP packets we should be seeing.

  • In my case I installed the SSDPTester Android app on my phone to verify the SSDP broadcasts bouncing around my network (I'm guessing iOS should also have similar apps available).
  • If all is well, the debug log output from the Docker container should generally match the packets seen from the control device.

• If the container is unable to see any SSDP packets, try running the container on a different machine, or use a different Docker network profile such as macvlan to make your container appear like it's a separate device on the network. See the Docker docs for more.

GPHOTO2

• Check that gphoto2 inside the container is able to connect and download from your camera; run the container as normal and then enter the container shell by running:

docker exec -it sony-pm-alt /bin/sh

• Once the container shell is ready, run "Send to Computer" on your camera and wait for it to connect to your network. Once the camera is connected, you have 2 minutes to do the following steps:

  1. Find the IP address of the camera (Should be able to get this from your router logs, or try the Angry IP Scanner app)
  2. Once you have the IP, go to the container shell and pass it through to the test script:

./gphoto_connect_test.sh x.x.x.x

(Where x.x.x.x is the IP address of your camera)

• If it fails, validate that the PTP_GUID param has been entered correctly and the value has been successfully copied to the settings file in the container under ~/.gphoto/setting (Can check the sample gphoto-settings file to see how this should normally look).

• See the Troubleshooting Section in the original repo for additional gphoto2 checks.

PYTHON SCRIPT

• The main script is sony-pm-alt.py, which is just a basic python server that will listen for the correct UPNP broadcast. Once detected, it will trigger gphoto2 with the given arguments. For any issues related to the actual camera connection and photo transfer, please check the Troubleshooting Section and the issue tracker in the original repo.

• For any post-processing (folder creation and file ownership) issues or docker-related issues, feel free to raise them here.