connectiong SD cards and external hard drives

[aaggee]

I hope i'm posting this in the right place and that someone will actually reply (last post was a week ago)

but in short:
>I'll be backpacking Europe from 6+ months.
>I'm a huge photo geek so there will be a lot of photos being taken with my dslr
>looking to purchase a tablet (deciding on ipad mini or nexus 7) to be used for:
---keeping in touch back home
---entertaining myself while on the move
---storing all the photo's i take.
---possibly for navigation around the cities

my questions are:
>how easy is it to move photos from a SD card to the tablet? then from the tablet to an external HDD? (on the ipad mini, photo booth opens automatically with a select all option to transfer once the SD card is connected.)
>am i able to connect an unpowered external HDD (320gb) to the device and run it while i'm on a train or something?
>does the nexus 7 have inbuilt gps and can it run maps and positioning offline?

[S.Prime]

I will address the sd card question and leave the external hard drive questions, to many of our users who have more experience with them.

To move photos to and from the Nexus 7 you will need and OTG cable and the Nexus Media Importer app, which I now understand supports export from the Nexus 7 to your SD Card. Personally, I have a Rooted Nexus 7 and use the app,  Stickmount.

I will say that Nexus Media Importer, recommends a power source for an external hard drive.

I am getting the ball rolling on your issues, expect lots of input from our members.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 4 Beta

[JayJ]

Yes Prime is correct, to use an HDD you would need a power supply because the Nexus 7 does not provide the power needed to run an HDD. You could either use a powered USB hub which would require an AC power source so probably not practical whilst backpacking around Europe or I'd suggest you get a "Y" lead OTG cable and use a Mobile Battery Pack like this...

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B009USAJCC/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1368394947&sr=8-1&pi=SL75

With this you power the HDD from the Battery pack and once you've transferred your photos to your tablet using Nexus Media Importer, you then transfer them to the HDD also using Nexus Media Importer.

Finally, I'll point out that with an OTG cable you should be able to connect directly to the camera cutting out the need for an SD card converter or USB card reader as I don't believe you can get a full size SD card to USB converter.

Sent from my Paranoid Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 4 Beta

[janipuni]

Hi aaggee!

I'll like to know how about your experience using nexus 7 to move photos.
I'm going to UK this summer and I want to do the same as you: move photos from my dslr camera to usb storage or dropbox using my nexus 7.

I think I need to rooted and I'm looking for a OTG cable.

So, can you tell me if nexus 7 it's ok to do it?

Thx

[strollin]

I have an Eye-Fi http://www.eye.fi/ SD card in my Nikon camera and have an app on my Nexus 7 that communicates via wifi directly with the SD card.  When I take a picture with my camera, it is instantly transferred to my Nexus 7 for storage or viewing.  Not all cameras support the Eye-Fi but many do.  You can check on the website to see if your camera is supported.

I have an OTG cable and can use Nexus Media Importer app to move my pictures to an external hdd or flash drive.  I have also offloaded pics from my N7 to Dropbox but that requires an internet connection.  I also have a Seagate Wireless Plus 1TB external drive that allows me to move pics to/from the N7 via a wifi connection.  The drive is battery powered and requires no power from the N7.

The last item you asked about is GPS.  Yes, the N7 has built-in GPS and does NOT require a data connection for the GPS to work.  However, you need to find a navigation app that can store it's map data locally on the N7.  CoPilot Live is one such app.  I use and like it.  The Google Navigation app that comes with the N7 requires a data connection to constantly update the map data.  It has the ability to cache a limited amount of data but there is no option to store all of it's map data locally.  Of course storing map data locally requires using some of your N7's storage.  I have an 8G N7 and haven't found it to be an issue.  If you have a 16 or 32G model it certaqinly won't be a problem.