Nextcloud Box is out - feedback welcome!
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Many of you probably have seen that we released the Nextcloud Box together with Canonical and WDLabs. Yes, this is a continuation of the earlier PiDrive collaboration when we still were at our previous, you know, oldCloud
There will be a webinar about Snappy and the Box early next month, if you're interested, and you can of course purchase the Box from our website.
I'd love to hear feedback from you lot!!!
To avoid some questions, let me answer some obvious ones
- what about other boards?
- We're working on getting the Pi3 supported, will be before the end of the year. More will follow but it isn't yet clear which, much depends on what Canonical does with Ubuntu Core. I personally have the oDroid C2 high on my wish list
- We're working on getting the Pi3 supported, will be before the end of the year. More will follow but it isn't yet clear which, much depends on what Canonical does with Ubuntu Core. I personally have the oDroid C2 high on my wish list
- so Nextcloud sells hardware now?
- god, no, we make software and we'd like to stick to what we do best. Hardware, hosting - we're super happy if partners do it (see our providers page for hosting!) as it helps people keep their data safe and that is our mission after all. But it isn't our forté. So this device is more of a reference device - we hope others will copy it
- god, no, we make software and we'd like to stick to what we do best. Hardware, hosting - we're super happy if partners do it (see our providers page for hosting!) as it helps people keep their data safe and that is our mission after all. But it isn't our forté. So this device is more of a reference device - we hope others will copy it
- what about the firewall/NAT...
- yeah. Unsolved. This device works easily, out of the box, locally. But NAT/firewall will still limit its usefulness. We are working on that, though, and help is welcome. We will release a solution once it is finished!
- What about redundancy/backup/more storage?
- the Box is designed to accommodate a 2nd drive, you could use to expand storage or use as backup. We would also like to have a backup app to secure data for home users somewhere else, well encrypted of course. Help welcome!
Ask any other questions you have!!!
- the Box is designed to accommodate a 2nd drive, you could use to expand storage or use as backup. We would also like to have a backup app to secure data for home users somewhere else, well encrypted of course. Help welcome!
Oh and yes, we also published version 1.3 of our Android client with a whole bunch of often requested features and - more is coming. We're smokin' hot in this area and that is all community power! Big kudos to our Android contributors.
- what about other boards?
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IMO it should have just had a ARM based chip already in it. not require people to get a raspberry pi for it.
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I'd second Jason's comment.
I had looked at this device, but I'm more concerned with the hardware limitations of the pi2 than I would be of anything else. We have Cterra C200 devices currently and even though they have gigabit ethernet they often often can sustain read / write speeds in the 100mbit range because the CPU on the controller is just maxed out.
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yeah, the Pi isn't super fast and yes, something could be included. But contrary to what you might think, it would inflate the price extremely significant. We're making thousands, not millions of these, and creating a custom ARM board... that is not feasible.
We did make the box compatible with the oDroid C2, though I'm not sure yet when the software will be able to handle it.
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With a Pi3, the slowdown is going to be the USB interface to the drive. Not a terrible little box. Would be nice to see it include a Pi at least. I can understand that doing a custom board doesn't make sense.
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@Jason said in Nextcloud Box is out - feedback welcome!:
IMO it should have just had a ARM based chip already in it. not require people to get a raspberry pi for it.
Which just means making a kit that has the RP2 included already. Nothing more complex than that.
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@jospoortvliet Glad to see the continuation of the old project. Only wish that there was a good RAID 1 option for this, but I know why there isn't (yet).
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@mattel said in Nextcloud Box is out - feedback welcome!:
I'd second Jason's comment.
I had looked at this device, but I'm more concerned with the hardware limitations of the pi2 than I would be of anything else. We have Cterra C200 devices currently and even though they have gigabit ethernet they often often can sustain read / write speeds in the 100mbit range because the CPU on the controller is just maxed out.
A single SATA drive is likely going to be the bottleneck here, though.
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@jospoortvliet said in Nextcloud Box is out - feedback welcome!:
yeah, the Pi isn't super fast and yes, something could be included. But contrary to what you might think, it would inflate the price extremely significant. We're making thousands, not millions of these, and creating a custom ARM board... that is not feasible.
We did make the box compatible with the oDroid C2, though I'm not sure yet when the software will be able to handle it.
Is there any licensing stopping you from including the RP itself just as part of the package?
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@travisdh1 said in Nextcloud Box is out - feedback welcome!:
With a Pi3, the slowdown is going to be the USB interface to the drive. Not a terrible little box. Would be nice to see it include a Pi at least. I can understand that doing a custom board doesn't make sense.
Yeah, custom board would be silly. Nothing here that would benefit from the customization.
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@scottalanmiller said in Nextcloud Box is out - feedback welcome!:
Is there any licensing stopping you from including the RP itself just as part of the package?
nah, it'd be possible, but we'd need suddenly a LOT of certification from the FCC and TÜV and so on - that would delay release significantly. If (when) we go for bigger numbers this is high on our wish list, though.
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@jospoortvliet said in Nextcloud Box is out - feedback welcome!:
@scottalanmiller said in Nextcloud Box is out - feedback welcome!:
Is there any licensing stopping you from including the RP itself just as part of the package?
nah, it'd be possible, but we'd need suddenly a LOT of certification from the FCC and TÜV and so on - that would delay release significantly. If (when) we go for bigger numbers this is high on our wish list, though.
You could just sell it in the same box and let people assemble themselves.
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@scottalanmiller said in Nextcloud Box is out - feedback welcome!:
You could just sell it in the same box and let people assemble themselves.
I'm not sure about the rules here, but my WDLabs friends assure me that shipping a Pi with it is going to require certification, even if unassembled. You can do a bundle in the store, perhaps, that is different and Amazon does that of course all the time. Not sure if they (can) resell Pi's.
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@jospoortvliet said in Nextcloud Box is out - feedback welcome!:
@scottalanmiller said in Nextcloud Box is out - feedback welcome!:
You could just sell it in the same box and let people assemble themselves.
I'm not sure about the rules here, but my WDLabs friends assure me that shipping a Pi with it is going to require certification, even if unassembled. You can do a bundle in the store, perhaps, that is different and Amazon does that of course all the time. Not sure if they (can) resell Pi's.
They do resell Pis. That's why I think you can do it. It's just a bundle. You are just selling the pieces at the same time. You ARE the store at that point.
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@scottalanmiller said in Nextcloud Box is out - feedback welcome!:
They do resell Pis. That's why I think you can do it. It's just a bundle. You are just selling the pieces at the same time. You ARE the store at that point.
You're right, I checked with them today about what we can do. We can indeed bundle it as long as we don't pre-assemble it all. We're discussing how/when/what, I am personally of the opinion we should do this once we support the oDroid C2 and include that. Pi's are everywhere, many people have them - not with the oDroids
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@jospoortvliet said in Nextcloud Box is out - feedback welcome!:
@scottalanmiller said in Nextcloud Box is out - feedback welcome!:
They do resell Pis. That's why I think you can do it. It's just a bundle. You are just selling the pieces at the same time. You ARE the store at that point.
You're right, I checked with them today about what we can do. We can indeed bundle it as long as we don't pre-assemble it all. We're discussing how/when/what, I am personally of the opinion we should do this once we support the oDroid C2 and include that. Pi's are everywhere, many people have them - not with the oDroids
Makes sense to me.
