Technology Setup for a Trip

TL;DR

Tech for travel post!

Intro

Software and Hardware setup before trips or vacations.

Let see interesting tech for a trip.

Because you wont be carrying a lot of stuff: https://levels.io/carry-on-world-travel/

Software Setup

If you are reading me for some time already: You know that I really enjoy SelfHosted Apps.

For content creation, you can have a look to ubuntu studio with tools like gimp or digikam.

Communication

You can setup a Matrix Server and then install Element as Chat app

Some tech people prefer discord or slack to build communities though.

VPNs

A virtual private network so that you can access your homelab containers, without them being hit by bot queries.

Wireguard

You can call Wireguard the VPN client for PROS and not for “Pacos”.

Wireguard (wg-easy) Server

VPS and Wiregaurd VPN

Tailscale

I really like the simplicity of tailscale (you just connect with google) and you get your laptops/smartphones to be connected in between.

Without portforwarding and complex configs.

curl -fsSL https://tailscale.com/install.sh | sh
# sudo apt-get install apt-transport-https &&
# curl -fsSL https://pkgs.tailscale.com/stable/raspbian/buster.gpg | sudo apt-key add - &&
# curl -fsSL https://pkgs.tailscale.com/stable/raspbian/buster.list | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/tailscale.list &&
# sudo apt-get update &&
# sudo apt-get install tailscale &&
sudo tailscale up
tailscale ip -4 #get the ip 

#sudo tailscale logout
#sudo tailscale down

echo 'net.ipv4.ip_forward = 1' | sudo tee -a /etc/sysctl.conf &&
echo 'net.ipv6.conf.all.forwarding = 1' | sudo tee -a /etc/sysctl.conf &&
sudo sysctl -p /etc/sysctl.conf &&
sudo tailscale down

sudo tailscale up --advertise-exit-node

Trip Planner

This is one of the webapps that you can selfhost for your trips.

Well, better if you do so beforehand, because it will allow you to understand weather patters in your destination.

Trip Planner Post

Weather Trends with Python

Go Pro Telemetry EDA

EDA Metadata Extraction at PyRouteTracker

You also have these:

You can also have a look to projects like: https://github.com/maxlerebourg/outpin and to GPX Studio

Apache v2 | OutPin offers a way to plan your future holidays by creating adventures and adding steps to them (with PocketBase/SQLite)

Which are selfhostable as per this section of my Docker repo: https://github.com/JAlcocerT/Docker/tree/main/Others/Travel

Maps

You can install Organic Maps as Android app..

..but also on Linux:

flatpak install flathub app.organicmaps.desktop #https://flathub.org/apps/app.organicmaps.desktop

Before Organic Maps, I was using maps.me, but it became so bloated lately.

To record your routes as GPX:

1. https://github.com/OpenTracksApp/OpenTracks

OpenTracks is a sport tracking application that completely respects your privacy.

To visualize them later, you can use GPX Studio

2. https://github.com/jonasoreland/runnerup

A open source run tracker

3. https://codeberg.org/jannis/FitoTrack

FitoTrack - A privacy oriented fitness tracker for Android

And they can be combined with FitTrackee

• https://github.com/SamR1/FitTrackee

AGPL 3.0 | Self-hosted outdoor activity tracker 🚴

4. https://github.com/IoTechCrafts/AdventureLog

Self-hostable travel tracker and trip planner.

5. If you are using a car/camper, this might be helpful:

Android On Linux

Waydroid Setup

6. https://github.com/gpxstudio/gpx.studio

• see the app: https://gpx.studio/app#3.98/41.91/19.39

MIT | the online GPX file editor

BackUps

Nextcloud

If you will be recording at 4K, you will need back up space.

Here it comes Nextcloud as a backup solution, as it has clients for desktop/web/android/ios.

I also like Syncthing but, if you care, it does not have ios app

Get one of these connected to your SBCs at home and you are ready:

Crucial SSD for a Pi

Ready to Plug to MiniPC or SBC

Remember that Nextcloud is a full fledged selfhosted cloud.

#version: '2'

# volumes:
#   nextcloud:
#   db:

services:
  nextclouddb:
    image: linuxserver/mariadb:10.11.8
    restart: always
    container_name: nextclouddb
    volumes:
      - /home/Docker/nextcloud/db:/var/lib/mysql
    environment:
      - MYSQL_INITDB_SKIP_TZINFO=1
      - MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=rootpass
      - MYSQL_PASSWORD=ncpass
      - MYSQL_DATABASE=nextcloud
      - MYSQL_USER=nextcloud
#    networks: ["nginx_nginx_network"] #optional 

  nextcloudapp:
    image: nextcloud:30.0.0 #latest
    container_name: nextcloud
    restart: always
    ports:
      - 8035:80
    links:
      - nextclouddb
    volumes:
      - /home/Docker/nextcloud/html:/var/www/html
    environment:
      - MYSQL_PASSWORD=ncpass
      - MYSQL_DATABASE=nextcloud
      - MYSQL_USER=nextcloud
      - MYSQL_HOST=db
      - NEXTCLOUD_TRUSTED_DOMAINS= http://orangepi5.blablabla.ts.net:8035 #http://0.0.0.0:8050 #https://nextcloud.yourduckdnsubdomain.duckdns.org/
#    networks: ["nginx_nginx_network"] #optional 
 
# networks: #optional
#   nginx_nginx_network: #optional
#     external: true #optional

Other Image Center Backups

1. Lychee
2. Piwigo
3. Photoview
4. Ente, PhotoPrism, Immich…
5. And…PiGallery2: which provides the following cool web UI!

…You can see These tools covered at this photo management tools post

Hardware Setup

A travel router, an action cam and a kindle.

What else would you need?

Remember that a VPS Setup or some SBCs at home would be good companions.

To bring with you, a compact laptop can also be interesting.

This one is ~1.2kg, a tablet can be ~500g

You can also take a 4G LTE Wingle, like the OLAX:

Action Cam

If you like to tinker with video and collect virtual memories, you might brign with you an action cam.

Recently ive been bringing the OA5Pro and im still figuring out how to make better videos tbh:

About DJi Oa5 Pro

Learning more about this action camera

Video Workflow

With the Asrock x300

Some people bring their drons.

But my DJI Tello dron is more a 101 tool to get started with dron flying while doing some Python test on it.

I saw some people mounting action cameras on their drons with some adjustments.

SmartPhone

I am very happy with the Android Pixel 8 Pro

Maybe some backup?

Router

TPLink MR200

4G Home Router Review

Travel Router Setup

GL-MT3000 review and VPN Setup

You can also get one of these portable 4G usb router (and bring a sim adapter):

See: https://www.simyo.es/preguntas-frecuentes/esim.html or airalo

Ive been experimenting with the travel router around and…

If you need to login to a hotel network, where credentials (user/pass) are required, this will prompt:

Conclusions

Done travelling?

On the other side of the coin you have mortages and jobs waiting for you:

After travelling and hopefully learning new perspectives, you can create a website to tell your story.

My Story

Stories with a MTB that I shared into a SSG website

You can also have a look to: https://github.com/gpxstudio/gpx.studio

MIT | the online GPX file editor

And to https://github.com/JAlcocerT/pigallery2 because is so cool that displayes your photos and their GPX metadata

The gallery also render the GPX files!

it’s very simple to setup 🐳

Bonus

1. Movemouse - Because I know you are workationing

GPL 3.0 | Move Mouse is a simple piece of software that is designed to simulate user activity.

2. https://github.com/CHerSun/NoSleep

Cost of Living

Sometime ago I got to know this site: https://www.numbeo.com

A pure reflection of the knowledge of crowds, applied for cost of living.

• https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/in/Warsaw
• https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/in/Amsterdam

At the time of writing, these are separeted by x1.4 without rent (and ~x2 with rent)

If you are planning a trip and want to make a guess on the costs, its worth to have a look!

Wouldnt it be great to have an app that combines all of that? :)

FAQ

Sharing Expenses with Spliit

If you are not aware of Spliit for sharing expenses with others: its kind of a https://settleup.app/, but OSS

• https://github.com/spliit-app/spliit

MIT | Spliit is a free and open-source alternative to Splitwise, aimed at simplifying expense sharing among friends and family.

Spliit offers a robust solution for managing shared expenses and simplifies the process for users.

Spliit an fantastic project to have a look to.

In my opinion its just missing the possibility to add different currencies.

The good thing?

You can get a .json report to analyze later what has been going during the trip.

Alternatively, you can use DollarDollar with multicurrency expenses support!

What about containers?

Containers are great for SelfHosting.

And you can see how simple is to get up and running with docker and Portainer:

No wonder why Containers are one of my favourite technologies to use for app reliability!

More Cool Software

Thanks to this sites, I get to know more cool apps:

1. https://openalternative.co/self-hosted

• https://github.com/piotrkulpinski/openalternative

Which can be seen also as an awsome Astro project!

2. https://alternateoss.com/

3. https://youmightnotneed.co/