The Internet of Things gets its own NAS

Some of the many, many, nodes promised to connect to the internet of things are going to do two things: make a lot of data but not always be able to send it anywhere. How to store that data in the often-inhospitable locations sensors and small computers will find themselves seems to have exercised some minds at Taiwanese …

[Fuzz]

POE?

Is it just me or does anyone else think PoE is kind of pointless for a NAS.PoE is useful for devices that have to be in a particular location, phones, CCTV cameras, wireless access points. A NAS is just as useful right next to the switch from which it is drawing power. Any device that needs to store data remotely is going to include that capability on the device, most likely through the use of an SD card.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: POE?

clearly you have never bothered to set up a network of many devices, I have POE, and wish more of my devices supported it... the only thing I want to have to run power to is my POE switches.... everything else should pull from the ethernet...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: POE?

"Any device that needs to store data remotely is going to include that capability on the device"

I have one of my cameras at the end of a 50m CAT5e run with PoE at the end of my garden - "Volecam"! Zoneminder does the scraping and storage in the attic. It's been there for 2 years now.

There is a SD card slot on the camera - I don't use it. I can't be arsed to keep on walking down the garden to get it especially after rain causes the naff on board motion detector to go mad and fill an SD.

When I want to move the camera around, I have quite a lot of options.

Without PoE, I'd be looking at an awful lot of steel wire armoured cable.

Cheers

Jon

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmm

SD write cycles may be a problem, think I'll pass.

[Bronek Kozicki]

Re: Hmmm

I think SD is meant for boot device here. Assuming you disable swap, it is not going to be written to very often. USB 3.0 is for user data.

[Sanctimonious Prick]

Give Us...

Power Over WiFi - POWFi!

[JLH]

Re: Give Us...

Power over Wifi?

There was an article on El Reg about mobile phones which woudl charge using power gathered from radio transmissions - ie the everyday AM and FM

So truth is stranger than fiction.

Quick Google turns up:

http://hotair.com/archives/2013/11/10/harvesting-electricity-from-wasted-radio-waves/

[Pookietoo]

Re: So truth is stranger than fiction.

ISTR a sci-fi novel in which power from a parallel universe was tapped by special antennae, so truth really isn't stranger than fiction in this case.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: So truth is stranger than fiction.

That sounds like Waldo by R. A. Heinlein.

[Charles Manning]

Re: Give Us...

The term "waste radio waves" is somewhat misleading. If you're sucking up the RF energy then the signal getting to the next house is going to be weaker.

Been doing this for years though - personally since the 1960s- and those before since the early 1900s. It's called a crystal set.

[Mage]

OpenWRT

Two ethernet ports?

Add HDD on USB

Add USB 3G dongle

Add USB Wifi?

Plug between cable modem or Fibre modem and your LAN switch. Router/Firewall/Backups and auto failover to 3G?

Power it and Switch off UPS.

It's not any use for cameras without the separate HDD. If it had 3 to 5 slots for HDDs I'd call it a NAS as it is, it's just a smart router/Adaptor.

[petur]

Purpose?

I don't understand what this has to do with the Internet Of things... And if it doesn't have any real I/O, why should it be 'out there' if you can stick it next to the switch/router - you access it only over Ethernet anyway.

If it is meant to access USB devices over Ethernet, there are smaller/cheaper solutions.

This reminds me more of the slug and those plug computers, except they are smaller than this one.

[Truth4u]

What's the point of PoE if you still need a power socket for the USB disk?

This is supposed to be for those difficult areas but with a USB disk attached you might as well just buy a proper NAS which would use the same one power socket as the USB disk.

[Microdot]

The Internet of Things gets its own NAS

Why would you need a power socket? I've got two 2.5" enclosures kicking about at home that power off the USB connection. And if you wanted this somewhere you could get to the SD slot easily to be able to swap the card out then why not have it hanging off the end of an ethernet cable? This is the interNET of things, you've got to think that the things on it are going to be networked so why not use PoE to power them?