I want to get a _very_ light weight "computer" to act as a controller for some local storage. Basically a DIY Network Attached Storage that burns very little power.
It's primary purpose in life would be to save video from a security camera.
Is Raspberry Pi still a good option, or has there been other competitors in this space that might be a better choice?
I'm also thinking just a cheap tablet might be a good choice? Best Buy has an Android based tablet for $60 and there are Windows based ones for less than $100. They are designed for very low power with the bonus of a screen, but it probably won't make a good file share.
Opinions welcome.
Years ago a friend of mine (perhaps on this list) used a cubie board that had sata on it.
Quick google shows that you can find a fair number of 'lists' that let you search for 'sata' and get decent results [1]. If I was building a project for that, I would start there.
[1] http://linuxgizmos.com/ringing-in-2015-with-40-linux-friendly-hacker-sbcs/
On 2017-04-25 9:13 AM, John Lange wrote:
I want to get a _very_ light weight "computer" to act as a controller for some local storage. Basically a DIY Network Attached Storage that burns very little power.
It's primary purpose in life would be to save video from a security camera.
Is Raspberry Pi still a good option, or has there been other competitors in this space that might be a better choice?
I'm also thinking just a cheap tablet might be a good choice? Best Buy has an Android based tablet for $60 and there are Windows based ones for less than $100. They are designed for very low power with the bonus of a screen, but it probably won't make a good file share.
Opinions welcome.
-- John Lange
Roundtable mailing list Roundtable@muug.ca https://muug.ca/mailman/listinfo/roundtable
On 2017-04-25 John Lange wrote:
I want to get a _very_ light weight "computer" to act as a controller for some local storage. Basically a DIY Network Attached Storage that burns very little power.
Is Raspberry Pi still a good option, or has there been other
[...]
I'm also thinking just a cheap tablet might be a good choice? Best
The problem with Pi / tablets is you don't get SATA (or even IDE) so the "massiest" you can get with mass storage is what SDHC/USB gives you. Not exactly cheap $/GB.
You probably want for a file server something with SATA ports, which means some sort of "real" mini computer, probably X86-compat.
I brought a little system I bought for a similar purpose (I needed SATA/IDE for native CD drives) to a MUUG BYOD meeting in December. I think I can still order them from my supplier (I am a reseller).
http://www.eprom.com/home/VIA/ARTiGO/index.html http://www.eprom.com/home/VIA/ARTiGO/artigo_images.html
Hah, I never noticed but they actually have a pic of using it with a SATA CD drive. Cool, I'm not the only wacky one.
The builtin PS *might* have enough juice to power 1 3.5" spinning-rust HDD, *maybe*. If not, you just need another external wart to HDD molex. The mobo supports 1 SATA drive or 1 IDE port which can probably do 2 drives (master/slave), and could possibly convert one/both of those into SATA! I think you can run IDE+SATA simultaneously so for sure you could get 2, maybe 3 drives running at once.
I'm sure power usage specs are somewhere on the net. Won't be nearly as low as a SBC, but should be waaay less than a normal PC. And it has VGA and DVI out for video.
I'm sure there's other computers like this out there, as Rob says. If my supplier still has this one, I think the price was around $100 (no RAM, no HDD).
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John Lange -
Robert Keizer -
Trevor Cordes