Raspberry π

Did someone say cooling?

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Sometimes, on rare occasions, something is so batshit mental and pointless that it becomes perfect. Although surely it would have been better to rotate the Pi by 90 degrees so the airflow wasn't inhibited by the ports?

Heh, yup. I love overkill cooling. Something deeply pleasing about it.

Only issue with that thing above is there’s no way to actually plug the thing in.

Would be a buttload quieter with one large diameter fan at each end rather than pairs of small-diameter screamers.

I have a Dell Poweredge 1950 1U "pizzabox" server here that I tend not to switch on very often, partly because of its hunger for electricity but mostly because it's at least 50% louder than my projector.

https://m.banggood.com/Argon-One-Mini-Black-Aluminum-Alloy-Case-with-Fan-Magnetic-Top-for-Raspberry-Pi-4B-p-1661666.html?wgu=10531_54264_15886029004077_d31a003829&wgexpiry=1596378900&utm_source=webgains&utm_medium=webgains_uk&utm_campaign=promotion&utm_content=54264

On the subject of cases, this looked like a cute solution to cable mgmt:

My plan is going to be to pick up some of these and put a few of the random raspberry pis I have together in one place

Be wary of the fan noise. I haven't found a fan of that size that is quiet enough to have in the same room as me yet.

Yes, I wasn't planning on having the fans on. Those little ones are always a bit annoying. It looks open enough that it shouldn't need one.

Anyone here made a NAS with a raspberry PI?

I have two HDs on order and will try to get it all setup as a RAID NAS once they arrive.

Not sure whether I'll need cooling or not.

Any advice appreciated

Which version raspberry pi are you planning on using?

I looked into making a NAS before but was put off by the USB throughput.

I think it's a 3b+

I'm not too worried about Uber quick performance. As long as I can stream HD video.

two HDs on order

Which ones?

I've been curious about this.

This one x 2.

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If I was doing this I'd definitely upgrade to a 4. Anything before that is pretty slow on network and usb throughput.

I'd also be looking at powered USB drives, don't rely on the pi to power them.

I think those will be fine.

The Pi 1 was only capable of powering 100ma devices over usb but you could still find portable USB drives that could run on that, although admittedly not reliably. A pi 3b+ is absolutely fine for 500ma steady on each port, as long as you have a good enough power supply.

Actually I'm wrong, the 3b+ and 4 are limited to 1.2A across all USB ports. Still should be ample though.

Edit: maybe not. Two of those Toshiba drives could theoretically draw 1.8Anp at peak. I didnt consider that USB 3 devices dont also have to comply with USB1 for power.

Also, it's not just the power supply, I find the pi is pretty picky about the cable used.

A powered USB 3 hub may be needed then?

I think you'd want a powered hub from what I read when I was looking into it.

TBH the power supply is what stopped me trying it. As it moved the cost from "cheap as chips", to "maybe I should weigh up the value/performance for money".

Anyway, looking forward to seeing how this works out.

Not quite Pi, but my ESP8266 turned up just waiting for the thermometer and other bits. Have absolutely no idea what I'm doing.

Right, I've ordered one of these powered hubs from PiHut, cheap as chips at £4.50.

Also a 1.35mm 5v power supply, which came from a different online vendor.

I'll have to open up the hub and snip the 5V return line, to prevent back-power to the Pi.

That should see me right, for a total upcost of about £15 including delivery.

Given that Google Cloud Print will end of life soon, I think this device could also usefully act as a CUPS print server.

I need to think about casing for all this, although that seems secondary at the moment.

Not sure if I'll need a fan or not. Hopefully not.

Was going to suggest finding a lower power consumption HD but that sounds like it'd work too. I doubt the hub will throttle throughput, seeing as a Pi3+ shares a single USB bus anyway.

Yeah, the HDs are already on their way, so this seemed easier.

I've just been doing some more reading on this. The fact that most USB drives draw so much power is completely new to me. I guess the days of USB1 compliance are well and truly behind us.

I'm sure it must be still possible to find <500ma external drives as so many people have TVs and set top boxes that only provide 500ma from their USB ports and a few years ago there was a wide choice in devices suitable for this without external power.

I guess its progress of sorts. You can't stay backwards compatible for ever.

A powered hub is especially a good move for if, for whatever reason, you started powering stuff through the gpio, it all seems to contribute to the overall power budget.

@mashton maybe one of those little heatsinks will save you from fan noise?

USB hub and power supply are here. Hub opened and the return power line clipped.

Does anyone have any experience with miniDLNA? I am planning to use it as a very lightweight video streamer, which my Samsung TV will directly access.

Critical test case here: Can Ms mashton access Inspector Morse box set in the same manner as currently.

Or to be more precise:

Given current technological living room setup and user education.

When I change the NAS to the Raspberry PI and Ms mashton attempts to watch Inspector Morse.

Then I do not get shouted at.