There are solutions like ente and immich but I think they both are pretty overkill for my use case. I almost never look through my old photos so I don't need an app and a web UI or whatever. The face detection thing does not entice me either. I don't need encryption either.
Is there a simpler solution for this? I am thinking of just writing a script that syncs the camera folder using adb or something like that. But before I create a jank monstrosity I thought it would be better to ask around.
I went the jank monstrosity path. Well, a few scripts anyway.
I use an app called SimpleSSHD on the phone that lets me ssh in. Then rsync to transfer files. The script to sync pictures is like this:
# file 'droidip' contains the local wifi ip of the phone. dip=$(cat droidip) rsync --append-verify --progress -avz -e "ssh -p 2222" root@$dip:/sdcard/DCIM/Camera newphonepix
Truthfully it was as much about learning rsync as anything, and now I'm sticking with it because momentum I guess. adb is way faster if you really need to move a lot of files.
This. I don't even need real "scripts", I just plug my big drive into my laptop, start dropbear and use the shell (fish) history to get the right command. Takes about 15s to do everything :p
If you want a more continuous thing, you can look into Syncthing or something like that.
"Immich" might be a real option, I don't quite understand why you think it's overkill?
I mean syncthing has been mentioned plenty, but of course Nextcloud also solves the problem. It's can't truly sync a folder, but it works fine for backing up photos and videos.
The shameful answer is that the most convenient method of setting up immich is a docker compose stack but I have podman installed instead.
Well there more than one solution, if you want it. First of all, podman actually works fine with docker compose files. There may be some adjustments needed in other places, because despite the claim of being "a drop in docker replacement", it just isn't (quite). So assuming you install docker compose (not docker), you can just "docker-compose up" (note the dash) and it should work. Should.
Your can also just spin up a VM and install docker with compose in there, just for testing and/or running immich.
I use the adb method. Gets the job done with minimal fuss. I have a few cmds saved in a text file for copy, delete older than x days, etc.
Maybe take a look at PhotoSync as well, it's not foss but it's a really well-done app and seems to be what you are looking for