In today’s technology-driven environment, there are so many solutions that are offered for storage and access to our documents and data. For photographers, storage space is always a challenge, and finding the right solution with the right redundancy to mitigate the risk of losing content remains a daily challenge. Most of us in the industry use a NAS – Network Attached Storage with mirrored drives to ensure the safekeeping of our photos and data. However, the task of identifying and storing content in the correct location with the correct category and other identifying information can also be a daunting one. While many automated solutions exist, I could not help but notice a simple device that I came across a few days ago that likely has a place in my workflow.
Monument is a simple network device that allows you to plug in a hard drive with a storage capacity of your own choice, and it also allows you to plug a USB drive as a secondary drive for automatic backups. According to the company, “Monument’s Artificial Intelligence analyzes and organizes your photos by date, location, camera type, faces, and what’s in them; even if you have not tagged them before”. While this type of storage solution may not seem robust enough for the professional photographer, it can certainly work as a short-term storage solution for photos that need to be edited or shared right away.
If you take some quick photos on your phone, they are automatically transferred to the Monument device as soon as your phone connects to the same network. The device has both a gigabit Ethernet port and wifi built in and an SD card slot to accept your memory card from your camera. Even professional photographers have the need to share photos with their family members at home, and this device accomplishes that task as well since everyone on the same network can have an account and access to the content.
If you would like to give Monument a try, you can purchase one on their website or on Amazon for $169.99
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Hi, Have YOU actually used one? How did you manage?
It’s NOT BEEN EASY to setup, and it’s not a foolproof procedure, I bought 2 units via Kick, and the first one died while Updating its own firmware, I was left instructions on how to reboot it by using an SD card, but no joy. it’s still a brick. I hesitate to even open the second one…
Hi Mario,
The article that I wrote is a news story and not a review. A news story just highlights gadgets that we come across while surfing the web. Monument did promise to send a sample of their product for review but they never did, so I cannot provide any advice on functionality.
If you are interested in a similar product that I have tested and reviewed, you should checkout the Kwilt Shoebox products and my reviews on them.
Hope this helps.