Create a VPN or other way to get files to another location?

[Ultraviolet]

In my parents house I have a HDD that is shared on the network that is filled with content that they access via a raspberry pi hooked up to the TV.

 

It's a standard USB drive and hooked directly to the PI.

I've only very recently started to mess around with networks and working remotly and disovered that using teamviewer I was able to send files from my house directly to the shared hard drive at my parents house and then they can rescan using the pi to access the files... this makes my life so much easier to get content to the pi !!

 

Anyway there has to be a way to do this without getting them to turn their pc on, this would allow me to send files overnight and they could wake up rescan and boom new content with no effort on their part!

To add to the confusion the HDD cannot just be plugged into the usb on the home hub as it wont stream content wirelessly fast enough to the PI due to the house layout.

 

Reading what I can find, the best method for this would be to create a VPN?

So set up port forwarding and then I'd get access to the pi via their BT HOME HUB (but I have to have a static ip first or something?) this is where I get lost really and want to know what are my best steps for this WITHOUT buying new hardware.

I'm pretty sure a WD Cloud MYCloud drive would be ideal but I don't want to mess around with third party software and would ideally prefer to just hook directly in and send files over without relying on third parties in between.

 

SO to recap...

 

The HDD I want to access is connected up to a raspberry pi via USB on their network

I currently CAN access the drive via teamviewer from my home and send files directly to their HDD

I want to be able to do this Without them turning on their pc and having to log into teamviewer, so ideally log into the pi via it's ip address (therefore requiring a vpn? )

 

What are my options / best solutions in this case?

[jaimerks]

You can create a FTP server or VPN (VPN in Windows is easy), but you'd have to config your router (the gateway one) a bit to make it "pingable" from the outside

[T3X4S]

@Ultraviolet
RealVNC has a Rasberry Pi module

 

But my first thought was "why are the turning off their computer all the time ?  Just leave it on..."

You have several options, if 1 of the computers on the network is on.
If none of them are on then your options are less, but you can go through the gateway/router as @jaimerksmentioned which gives you need direct access to the pi.

I havent messed with Pi stuff that much


 

[Ultraviolet]

There is no way that they will leave the pc on all the time because parents 

 

I still dont get WHAT I need to change on the router to be able to access the drive from home. Perhaps this is all just too new and complicated for me yet?

[+BudMan MVC]

you do understand you could just install teamviewer server option on the pi right...

 

 

[DaveLegg Developer]

10 hours ago, BudMan said:

you do understand you could just install teamviewer server option on the pi right...

 

 

Or forward port 22 and use SFTP

[+BudMan MVC]

I think a simple port forward is beyond their grasp currently... If they understood how to port forward - why would they even be here?

[Ultraviolet]

Been at work today so VERY limited time to play around with both teamviewer and my router etc etc 

 

Anyway here is where I am and bear with me as im sure this sounds like junk to you experts as networking illudes me currently.

 

SO... using teamviewer I have create an account and added my laptop and desktop to the accounts to test the theory...my current aim is to use WOL to send a magic packet over the internet and wake the a pc on the network and therefore the harddrive via the pi.

 

I have been able to boot my home pc on my HOME INTERNAL network sending a magic packet and waking on LAN... So far so good.

So as far as I understand my next step would be to set the pc to a static ip on my local network and on the router (bt home hub) use port forwarding to allow a wake signal to be sent over the internet and teamviewer to take over.

 

So I THINK that I'm right in saying I need to put the port (remote desktop??) numbers into the router and then in teamviewer the broadcast ip of the router (which i belive will change once the router is restarted but the odd problem once a month or so shouldn't be a problem is that is the case)

 

You can probably tell I'm a total expert in this 

 

 

[+BudMan MVC]

And why are you worried about waking up the pc when you could just put teamviewer on the PI directly??

[Ultraviolet]

I cant install teamviewer on the pi because it's not running a full version of linux, it's openelec with kodi on it only.

I didn't want to confuse people with all these illegal streaming rubbish etc that people install on kodi, im not using any of that and didn't want to side track the conversation.

 

Openelec is stripped to the point where kodi runs great but teamviewer wont run, installing something like raspbian will allow teamviewer to run but in comparison kills the kodi performance.

[+BudMan MVC]

OE is very stripped down yes, but pretty sure it still has sftp support.  So forward port 22 to their pi IP, and then hit their public IP and you will be forwarded to the pi and can sftp files you want.  I would highly suggest you change the default password!  Which I believe is just openelec

 

Wouldn't of bother suggesting that if you would of mentioned you were running such stripped down os on your pi

[+Warwagon MVC]

you could download the dietpi virtual box image and install pivpn inside that. Dead simple to setup. Then install pihole in there also and have network wide adblocking and a vpn.

 

I have one running in virtual box on a Pentium j3710 with 4gb of ram. 

 

hmmm .. might not work for this situation.