 SynoDS: Synology DL Station

The joy of buying the Synology DS1511+ is the fact that I can use it as a download machine. I can now switch off the (higher watt and hence more expensive electricity bill) PC and just use the DS1511+ as a download machine.

And as part of that joy is the joy of playing with an iPhone app like  SynoDS: Synology DL Station. This app is available on the Apple App Store and is a fantastic app.

It allows you, as an iPhone user, to initiate, control, view and manage your downloads of your downloads in Synology anywhere. Yes, like on your way to work, during dinner parties or when you are bored in the streets 🙂 The methods of downloading includes http downloads (or what people called direct downloads via rapidshare, hotfile, megaupload etc) or bittorrent downloads or newsgroup (NZB) downloads.

On its own, it works really well in the home network. That means, if you want, you can manage your downloads at your own network without going to your PC. You can download your favourite shows when you are in toilet, lying in bed or watching your TV.

But the real fun starts when you set up your Synology DS1511+ to “be exposed” to internet. By setting up some basic portforwarding rules in your router, you can easily access your machine from anywhere. You can use http or if you are more paranoid, then use https too. You can use DynDNS to access your machine by means of simpler to remember address.

For example, I use all 4 methods

Home: Wireless Network at home
Internet : Http access to the machine
SSL : Using https method
DynDNS : Using my DynDNS method

Once you gained access to your machine, you can watch and manage your downloads (e.g. those you initiated from the download station app in Synology DSM).

There is an included “web browser” which allows you to set bookmarks of your favourite sites and then you can access the sites WITHIN the app. From there, you can find your links you need to download. My experience tells me that this is good for simple downloads of single links (e.g. TV shows) as compared to multiple links (e.g. movies). The latter is just harder to do.

Alternatively there is a quick and direct method of entering your download link and user id/password (for those premium web sites):

Interesting, talking about passwords, the tool settings allow you to set user id/passwords for Megaupload and Hotfile. But not rapidshare. On the other hand, the Download Station app in Synology DSM allow Megaupload and Rapidshare. Confusing 🙂

For the BT junkies, there are the usual great settings you need just like in uTorrent:

And newsgroup and even a scheduling tool:

My experience on this tool has been fantastic and the developer is very quick and very active on the forum in replying for help and issuing updates to the tool. This is a MUST HAVE tool when you buy Synology products and want to use it to download… U MUST HAVE IT 🙂