AutoIngest

Author: Jeremy Anderson
Contact: info@dcos.net
Website: dcos.net

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What It Does

AutoIngest is a Windows tray-resident tool that silently moves photos off an SD card or USB drive into a dated folder on your PC. Plug in the card, the .jpgs are moved (not copied) to ~/Pictures/YYYY-MM-DD/, and any RAW/HEIC/PNG files are converted to JPG and the originals removed from the card. A small toast pops into the corner while it's working, then disappears. Duplicate-aware within a single day — if you re-insert the same card on the same day, byte-identical files are skipped.

Built for eBay sellers who just want the photos off the camera and into a folder, with nothing to click.

Features

Silent move-import (the core)

• Polls for removable drives every 4 seconds via kernel32 GetDriveType and GetVolumeInformationW
• Probes DCIM, Pictures, and root folders for image files
• Moves JPG/JPEG files directly to ~/Pictures/<today's date>/ — no dupes left on the device
• Converts all other formats (RAW, HEIC, PNG, etc.) to progressive JPG, then deletes the original from the card
• Same-day duplicate aware: within today's import folder, byte-identical files (matched by size then SHA-256) are skipped rather than re-imported
• Verify-before-delete: a file is only removed from the card after the destination is confirmed present and correctly sized
• Single-instance enforcement via named mutex

Toast UI

• Lives in the system tray by default — no window at startup
• A small borderless toast pops into the bottom-right corner when an import starts
• Shows live status (Moving 3/12: IMG_004.jpg) and a scrolling log
• Auto-hides ~4 seconds after the import completes
• Left-click the tray icon to peek at status on demand; right-click for the menu (show status, open import folder, reset drive memory, about, exit)

Image Conversion

• Powered by Magick.NET (ImageMagick 7 bindings)
• Handles 30+ input formats: JPG, PNG, BMP, TIFF, WebP, CR2, CR3, NEF, ARW, DNG, HEIC, HEIF, SVG, RAW, and more
• Converts at native resolution (no downscaling) to preserve full image detail
• Outputs progressive, optimized JPG

Architecture

AutoIngest/
├── AutoIngest.csproj         Project file, package reference, assembly metadata
├── App/                      WinForms UI layer (namespace AutoIngest.App)
│   ├── Program.cs            Entry point, single-instance mutex
│   ├── MainForm.cs           Tray icon, toast show/hide, monitor wiring
│   ├── MainForm.Designer.cs  Toast popup layout (WinForms Designer)
│   ├── MainForm.resx         Designer resource header
│   └── app.manifest          Windows 10/11 compatibility manifest
├── Core/                     Config/models layer (namespace AutoIngest.Core)
│   └── ConfigManager.cs      JSON config persistence
└── Engine/                   Import/conversion layer (namespace AutoIngest.Engine)
    ├── SDCardMonitor.cs      Background drive polling, photo discovery, move/convert pipeline
    └── ImageConverter.cs     Magick.NET wrapper for universal format-to-JPG conversion

Single NuGet dependency: Magick.NET-Q16-AnyCPU

Design Decisions

Decision	Rationale
Move, not copy	The card is the source of truth; leaving dupes after import causes confusion. Move it once, done.
Same-day dedupe	Re-inserting a card on the same day shouldn't double-import. Within today's folder, byte-identical files are skipped; name collisions with different content get a _1, _2 suffix. (We are not a cross-day dedupe tool — different days go in different folders.)
Tray + toast, no main window	This is a silent utility. You shouldn't have to manage a window — it just tells you when it's working.
C# / .NET 8 over Python	Single-exe deployment. No runtime, pip, or native extension installation on the end user's PC.
WinForms over WPF	Simple, direct control layout, no XAML complexity.
Magick.NET over System.Drawing	One library handles all 30+ formats including RAW, HEIC, SVG.
kernel32 P/Invoke over WMI	Deterministic, fast drive detection without COM initialization overhead.
Polling (4s interval) over WMI events	WMI event subscriptions require COM apartment threading and have inconsistent delivery across Windows versions.
Flat output directory	Matches the workflow: pull to date folder, open in browser, attach to listing.

Building

Prerequisites

• Windows 10/11
• Visual Studio 2022 Community (free) with ".NET desktop development" workload
• .NET 8 SDK (installed by VS2022 with the desktop workload)

Build from Visual Studio

1. Open AutoIngest.sln
2. Build → Build Solution (or Ctrl+Shift+B)
3. The output exe is in AutoIngest/bin/Debug/net8.0-windows/

Build from command line

cd AutoIngest
dotnet restore
dotnet build -c Release

Publish as single exe

REM Framework-dependent (~15 MB, requires .NET 8 desktop runtime on target PC)
publish.bat

REM Self-contained (~60-80 MB, runs on any Win10/11 PC)
publish-standalone.bat

Deployment

Copy the resulting AutoIngest.exe to the target PC. No installer required.

• Framework-dependent build: Requires .NET 8 Desktop Runtime. Windows 11 includes this by default. Windows 10 may need it from dotnet.microsoft.com.
• Self-contained build: No prerequisites. Runs on any Windows 10/11 PC.

Configuration

Config file: ~/.autoingest_config.json — created automatically on first run. Holds JPG quality and auto-import toggle.

Tech Stack

Component	Technology
Language	C# 12 / .NET 8
UI Framework	Windows Forms
Image Processing	Magick.NET-Q16-AnyCPU (ImageMagick 7)
Drive Detection	kernel32 GetDriveType + GetVolumeInformationW via P/Invoke
Serialization	System.Text.Json
Target	Windows 10 1809+ / Windows 11

License

MS-PL (Microsoft Public License). See LICENSE. Author: Jeremy Anderson (info@dcos.net, https://dcos.net).