Solar powered NAS?

[bluerwhite]

I want to buy or build a small solar-powered NAS for a location with no connection to the power grid. Here's what I want:

- Low power: Less than 10 W idle. 20 - 30 W loaded is acceptable.

- 2 drives with encryption: The encryption requirement is difficult and eliminates most of the low-power ARM/Marvell systems. Are there any ARM systems with decent hardware encryption?

- Decent performance: I don't need or expect a fast NAS, but I don't want something painfully slow either.

Right now, I'm looking at a DIY solution based on a VIA or Intel Atom processor with 2.5" laptop SATA drives

Does anybody have ideas or suggestions?

Thanks,
-Peter

 

[thiggins]

Have you looked at any of the Marvell-plug-based NASes like TonidoPlug? They use USB drives. Unit itself draws 3W from 120VAC

 

[stevech]

Have you looked at any of the Marvell-plug-based NASes like TonidoPlug? They use USB drives. Unit itself draws 3W from 120VAC

Isn't it kind of like PogoPlug, in promoting their Internet relay servers' fee based service as well? Not needed for LAN only use of course.

A real cheapie, rather slow 5MB/s is Hitachi's SimpleNET "NAS". Got mine on sale (discontinued product), now down to $19 I see 'round the net. Supports ethernet/SMB sharing and FTP, and uPnP media serving. and has two USB ports. Is size of a pack of cigarettes. I have a big thumb drive plugged into it and use of for 3rd level backup of critical files.

But even this one takes maybe 5 watts which for solar power is a bit much unless you figure out how to power down 80% of the time.

 

[thiggins]

Yes, Tonido is similar to Pogoplug, but with more services.

 

[stevech]

From what I've read, PogoPlug isn't doing well business-model wise.

 

[thiggins]

From what I've read, PogoPlug isn't doing well business-model wise.

Really? Please share your sources for this info.

 

[bluerwhite]

Thanks for the links to the TonidoPlug and the SimpleNET -- I hadn't seen those before. I'm also considering similar products from GlobalScale Technologies (http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com), including the D2Plug, DreamPlug, and OpenRD. Most of the plug-style computers are based on a Marvell ARM processor. This processor does have a hardware encryption engine (called "CESA"), but I haven't found data on how fast or reliable the engine is. I believe the Marvell is rather slow for encryption. None of the commercial NASs using Marvell offer disk encryption.

The ALIX (http://www.pcengines.ch/) and Soekris (http://soekris.com/) boards are promising. The Geode LX processor on those boards have hardware support for AES-128, but I haven't found good benchmarks.

The TrimSlice (http://trimslice.com) is another option.

Does anybody have first-hand experience with these systems?

 

[stevech]

Really? Please share your sources for this info.

Well, they got an unsafe product design (made in China) that caused a product recall
http://www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/prerel/prhtml11/11294.html

They're on round 3 of VC capital with 4 years of operations. Round 3 was reported as (just) $15M.

CloudStor is an indication that they can't make the VC investors' goals with very low margin retail boxes that have a lot of consumer handholding costs.

Indicators that, as the saying goes, they just haven't gotten enough "traction" and the growing competition with free or nearly-so on-line storage providers is pretty stiff.

 

[3DHack]

Did you get anywhere with your solar project?

Hi Bluerwhite and co,

It's been a couple of years since the thread started.. any luck?

I'm currently researching the cost of a solar powered computer lab for off grid teaching purposes. I'd really appreciate any input to the design and costing of a solar capture and storage solution for the running of the following list of gear:

• 5 Raspberry Pi computers - 5 W each I understand
• 5 modest energy efficient monitors - researching these now
• 1 small network hub - not sure of draw on these
• 1 micro server - 10 W when active and 4 W when idle.

I'm only just starting down this road and don't have all the figures for power draw yet but perhaps someone could give ballpark figures, or explain the thresholds of efficiency and cost that are involved in such a venture.

The machines will be networked to access the teaching content which will include rich media web pages with video clips etc. stored on the server. Off grid = no Internet.

Thanks indeed and please don't hesitate to contact me if you have any questions.

Nigel Haslam

 

[Nerre]

Well, first off you will need a battery bank providing power when there is no sun (night, cloudy etc).

Then you will need large solar panels to charge that battery bank when sun is available.

You also need to take into account that charging batteries only keep about 80% of the energy from the solar panels (batteries need to be "overcharged").

You will need to know the worst case scenario when it comes to the sun, how much sun time can you expect? Your battery bank must be able to have enough energy stored for that worst case.

Also you need to consider that many kinds of batteries don't like to be completely empty. For example lead batteries should never be used by more than half their capacity.

Now that you know your battery bank minimum size you will need to decide on how fast you want to be able to charge it. That will determine the size of your solar panels.


So, you need to find out a lot of numbers first.

 

[bluerwhite]

For my application, I settled on a Soekris net6501, a fanless Atom-based box the runs Linux very well. The Wind & Sun Forum (http://www.wind-sun.com/ForumVB/forum.php?) is a fantastic resource for everything related to solar power. Also, I did a presentation last year on solar powering an Apple II computer (http://media.bluerwhite.org/wp/2012/07/Solar-II.pdf), and this process is similar regardless of your preferred computer.