Introduction: Dropbox Support for Raspberry Pi OwnCloud

By My New Website!!
About: FPV Pilot, RC Fanatic, broken NextCloud Server too many times to count. Latest projects include whole home audio system based on Forked-DAAPD and Shairport-Sync as well as some IOT development.

So you just built your cloud server, and it's working great, but there's one problem. You have a ton of data stored at other locations! What can you do now? The Raspberry Pi is pretty slow, and it's a total pain to download all the files from somewhere else and re-upload them really slowly. Well, here's the thing, you don't have to! OwnCloud has native support for many different types of external storage, and one of the most commonly used ones is Dropbox. I'm not going to lie, it's not as great as Dropbox's interface, you may have to download files to view them, but it's totally awesome to have all your files in one place.

What you will need:

One Raspberry Pi Cloud Server (or I guess you could have more than one, if you want)

If you don't have that, see my previous Instructable right here.

A Dropbox account

A Computer

That's it! Let's get on with it and head over to step one!

Step 1: Setting Up External Storage

In order to connect OwnCloud to external storage, you first need to go into your server's website, make sure you have an Admin account first! Login, and click on the dropdown in the top left that says files. Click on the Apps tab, and click the Not Enabled Tab once it loads. You should see an app titled "External Storage Support" click enable, and then go into the Admin page. You should see a new option titled "External Storage"
Now click on the "Add Storage" dropdown, and click Dropbox. Don't worry about putting in any of the information, but now navigate to Dropbox and sign in. Scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page, and click "Developers" under the "Community" tab.

Step 2: Dropbox API Setup

Now that you are in the Developers Console, click on the Create Your App link in the middle of the screen. This will take you to a page with a lot of options. You will want to select "Dropbox API" and then select "Full Dropbox" and finally, title your App whatever you want. Click "Create App" and it should take you to a page with information. Copy the Client ID into the external storage page of OwnCloud, and then do the same for the Client Secret. It may not let you copy-paste so just type it in if not. Once all that is done, just click Grant Access, and it should open a new tab that asks if you want to let OwnCloud access your data. Click yes, and that should be it.

Step 3: Wrapping Up

So that should be it, the great part about this service is that photos load in the OwnCloud interface, you only need one website to interact with all your data! I hope it went smoothly for everyone, if you have any questions let me know in the comments. Overall, this one was a lot simpler that the last two Instructables I've published, so hopefully it made sense. Let me know what you want to see next, I'd be happy to at least try. Anyway, I'll upload something else in March!