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PiBox Mini – Modular Raspberry Pi Storage Server

pibox.io

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Re: PiBox Mini – Modular Raspberry Pi Storage Server

#61

Post by jagger27 »

pastudan wrote: post #60
jagger27 wrote: post #17

I love everything about this except the included 15W power supply, which seems too low for a CM4, fan, display, two SSDs, and the SATA controller. The CM4 draws somewhere between 7 and 9 watts under peak load, and each SSD would be around 2W under load. That feels pretty tight already. I'm sure it would be totally fine at idle and low loads, but I just can't see it being enough juice at full load with two drives, esp…

We've done a lot of testing it doesn't get close to 15W of power, and also never trips the low voltage warning with the variety of 15W supplies I've used. We are including a 17.5W power supply with all boards to give it a little extra margin, just in case.

That's great, thanks!

Re: PiBox Mini – Modular Raspberry Pi Storage Server

#62

Post by skjoldr »

erulabs wrote: post #33
AstroDogCatcher wrote: post #31

Looks great - exactly what I've always wanted to do with a Pi. Won't be buying one however, as the price is frankly outrageous; considering what you can get from a NUC or a Lenovo ThinkCentre, I would want to pay no more than £100 for the novel components, then bring my own CM4 and drives.

If it's not clear on the kickstarter, there is a $100 bundle that only includes the custom components, and lets you bring your own drives and CM4!

It's weird that there is no tier that offers everything from the Standard tier (case, fan, display, power supply etc.) minus CM4. I'd rather trade Wi-Fi capability for more eMMC storage, considering this thing will likely sit right next to my router anyway.

Re: PiBox Mini – Modular Raspberry Pi Storage Server

#63

Post by skjoldr »

pxeboot wrote: post #57
Aa9C4xPz43Gg7k6 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? CM4 would still be externally accessible through 1Gbit/s.

Mostly size and power consumption. Four NVMe drives could almost fit in a traditional size Raspberry Pi case. It looks like it is also possible to do 2.5Gbit Ethernet on the CM4 [1]. [1] https://pipci.jeffgeerling.com/cards_network/rosewill-rc2000...

Pi has limited PCIe lanes to devote to additional controllers. PiBox lacks USB3 for this reason -- all the throughput is already filled by SATA3. 2.5Gbit is likely to be mutually exclusive to either.

Re: PiBox Mini – Modular Raspberry Pi Storage Server

#64

Post by brirec »

Fnoord wrote: post #56
shepherdjerred wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no idea how Tailscale works, but it always does. I used to have a bastion host that I'd ssh into to access my home network. Now I just startup Tailscale and connect.

I just forward 51820 UDP on my router once, and use Wireguard. It always works.

And Wireguard doesn’t rely on someone’s cloud server, too!

I looked into Tailscale because the hype is big, and I’m sure it’s good software… but the biggest reason I pay for a VPS is to get public IPv4 addresses I can connect to. A proxy will only add overhead and compromise privacy.

Edit: specifically, Tailscale uses their own proprietary relay servers, and if you don’t want to use them you can’t use tailscale. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Re: PiBox Mini – Modular Raspberry Pi Storage Server

#65

Post by whalesalad »

anderspitman wrote: post #18

Interesting. Usually my critique for products like this is something along the lines of "great, but how are you going to access your data from the internet?" Typically the answer to that is you need some sort of tunneling service like ngrok to get around port forwarding, CGNAT, firewalls, etc. I maintain a list of solutions here[0]. The problem with most of these services is that they're targeted at developers and ar…

VPN. Easiest solution would be tailscale.

Re: PiBox Mini – Modular Raspberry Pi Storage Server

#66

Post by getcrunk »

erulabs wrote: post #51
sdenton4 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well this makes it sound like it's targeted squarely at developers: "Finally, a NAS that lets you use a standard operating system that you’re used to, like Ubuntu or Raspberry Pi OS."

We're starting with technical users - if we can't get programmers to love home-hosting there isn't much hope for the average user. As we go, we're very focused on making sure people who have no idea what Debian is can make use of the product, but I'm sad to say we're not quite there yet.

What is the bandwidth available for the drives io?

Re: PiBox Mini – Modular Raspberry Pi Storage Server

#67

Post by revolvingocelot »

revolvingocelot wrote: post #54
erulabs wrote: post #14

PiBox is built by us, KubeSail! We're a YC S19 company that focuses on home-hosting and shipping open-source software to customers. Happy to answer any questions!

Would you mind addressing this user's concerns [0] regarding the power supply? There's a serious allure to a NAS that actually runs a real OS and not some weird proprietary thing that's going to get pwned [1], and also isn't just a computer that I'm not using anymore. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28993970 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27713415

...too late to edit, but the comment I was trying to bring attention to [0] has received a response by another founder in re power, and the 15w advertised is actually a 17.5w supply [1], according to the parts list of the DIY edition on the Kickstarter page [2], which is apparently enough to supply everything consistently.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28993970

[1] https://amzn.to/3vEicn7

[2] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/pastudan/pibox-a-modula...

Re: PiBox Mini – Modular Raspberry Pi Storage Server

#68

Post by vladvasiliu »

brirec wrote: post #64
Fnoord wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just forward 51820 UDP on my router once, and use Wireguard. It always works.

And Wireguard doesn’t rely on someone’s cloud server, too! I looked into Tailscale because the hype is big, and I’m sure it’s good software… but the biggest reason I pay for a VPS is to get public IPv4 addresses I can connect to. A proxy will only add overhead and compromise privacy. Edit: specifically, Tailscale uses their own proprietary relay servers, and if you don’t want to use them you can’t use tailscale. ¯\_(…

> Edit: specifically, Tailscale uses their own proprietary relay servers, and if you don’t want to use them you can’t use tailscale. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

This is incorrect [0]. You can use your own relay servers [0].

However, Tailscale only uses the relay servers as a last resort. Most of the time, the connection will be established directly between the peers.

If you're able to configure port forwarding on your router as another commenter said, wireguard works well enough. You'll probably be able to also set up some form of dynamic DNS if you don't have a static IP (like no-ip or duckdns, etc). In this case, you don't need Tailscale.

However, there are more and more people who aren't able to do the port-forwarding thing any more, such as those behind CG-NAT. For example, in France and, from what I hear, the UK, this seems to spread. In these cases, Tailscale's NAT traversal techniques may still work – that is, your connection will be directly between your two peers and not through their relays.

Also, of note is that their relays are open source [1], and you can run your own. But if that's the case, you probably don't need Tailscale and can get away with some kind of hub-and-spoke setup.

---

[0] https://tailscale.com/kb/1118/custom-derp-servers/

[1] https://github.com/tailscale/tailscale/tree/main/derp

Re: PiBox Mini – Modular Raspberry Pi Storage Server

#69

Post by smcleod »

I'm assuming the IO would be pretty limited?

I'm looking for a simple DAS/NAS for 5-10 2.5" SSDs to attach either via a couple of 1gbit links, usb 3.(0/1) of a SAS connector (that could connect to a computer with a SAS/SATA controller running in HBA/JBOD mode.) but there doesn't seem to be much out there in the 2.5" space.

Re: PiBox Mini – Modular Raspberry Pi Storage Server

#70

Post by erulabs »

skjoldr wrote: post #62
erulabs wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's not clear on the kickstarter, there is a $100 bundle that only includes the custom components, and lets you bring your own drives and CM4!

It's weird that there is no tier that offers everything from the Standard tier (case, fan, display, power supply etc.) minus CM4. I'd rather trade Wi-Fi capability for more eMMC storage, considering this thing will likely sit right next to my router anyway.

This is an interesting suggestion. We actually do plan on selling the case separately, so you could just buy the "Hacker bundle" and the case and you'd be good to go. You can see the customization we plan to offer over at https://pibox.io - but for the kickstarter we simplified things a bit!
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