A Raspberry Pi NAS That Really Look Like A NAS
A Raspberry Pi NAS That Really Look Like A NAS
by tobychui
After I have designed my NAS case in Autodesk the same. But you would want to use the Pi3B+ as it
Inventor, I test fit them to see if every joint is correctly is faster. I will explain the detail later.
designed.
The right section of the case is design to hold two
Let me explains how the parts works. This case is 5inch hard disk how swap mount (See picture 4). And
divided into three parts. The left section is for the the extra space at the back is for a 7 cm fan, a DC
power management board and Raspberry Pi 3B+. jack and the cabling.
You can use a Pi 3/ 2B+ as well as their footprint is
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After the prints has finished, we can start building the case.
The case is made up of three parts as mentioned before, you can attach them together with some M3x5 screws
and M3x10 (for the top and bottom screw holes). Afterward, inserting the button caps into the holes and you will be
ready for the electronic parts.
Actually the buttons and LEDs are some simple the RED LED require 5V, so I added a resistor on it
circuit that attach the signal from the Pi's GPIO to the and planned to directly connect the LED VCC pin to
front panel. There is nothing much special here the power management board's 5V output. You can
except the button is a bit tricky. I would recommend use the Raspberry Pi's 3.3V GPIO pin as well without
you to do some test print before fitting the PCB inside the need for the extra resistor.
the case with glues. That can make sure the quality of
the buttons are good and clickable. In my design, as
After receiving the hot plug bay from ebay, I placed of the two HDD hot plug bay and attached two cable
two 2mm acrylic plate on the bottom and top of the to the end of it. One of the cable is a 2.1mm DC jack
right case. This is used to strengthen the support for for the 12V input and the other one is a micro USB
the two HDD bay as HDD are kind of heavy after male cable for data and 5V. Both of them are special
inserting into the bay. ordered so they bend in a direction towards the
bottom and preserve space.
Afterward, I used an old USB hard disk drive which,
usually contain some kind of SATA to USB converter The finished product should look something like the
circuit board. For the one I bought, it come with a pre- picture 5.
soildered 12V input port that can support 12V power
input for a 3.5 inch HDD. I attached them to the end
Now, we need to tape and glue the HDD hot plug bay bad time moving everything out and do the same
into the case. First, I would recommend sticking a process again.
double sided tape on the metal bracket of the bay.
After the bay is inserted and secured, put some After finishing this process, you would not see two
superglue on the contact between the Acrylic plate slot stick out of the right case and you can open then
and the metal bracket. But REMEMBER TO and close them via the handle build onto the hot plug
REMOVE THE PAPER ON THE ACRYLIC PLATE. bay.
I have forgotten to do so for the first time and I have a
Now, stick your hard disk into the bay, and it should fit perfectly. (If not, you should ask for a refund from your
seller of the hot plug bay xD)
You might notice that there are two rounded slot at the top back section of the right case. Those are for the USB
cables. You can now stick the cables out and make it looks more tidy before start working on the electronics.
Here comes the power management board. It is basically a latch switch so you can do it in
whatever style you want.
In the middle is a Tinduino. It is a self developed
Arduino for low cost deploy and development from
our Lab. Of course you can use an Arduino UNO for On the right is a buck converter. It steps down the
this and control the relay on off when there is a button voltage from 12V to 5V for the Pi and the Arduino.
press.
And lastly, the bottom 3 port, from left to right is 12V
There are plenty of tutorials online which teach you power in, 12V power out for HDD1, 12V power out for
how to make a board like this, for example: HDD2
https://www.instructables.com/id/Toggle-Switch-Wit...
Now, attach the power management board with the raspberry pi as shown in the picture above.
Plugin the 12V power input and everything should lights up (If not, maybe you can short the button and activate the
Arduino Relay Toggle System)
Now, screw in all the screws, plug in the power cable system like the FreeNAS or open media vault. But I
and you are ready to go? won't do that as I have planned to build my NAS from
the ground up.
Not yet. We still need the software. But here is what
the finishing hardware looks like. So what would I do next? Write my own NAS
operating system!
As the software is still in development, I would
recommend installing some open source OS / NAS
https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/raspbian/
and install it on your SD card. I think there are plenty of tutorial online so I don't duplicate those parts in this
instructable.
You might remember my post two years ago which is Now, I have completely rewritten it into a brand new,
a Raspberry Pi media center system called DSM like Web UI called the ArOZ Online (Beta)
ArOZ Online (Alpha) This system will works on both Window Host and
Linux Host (of course Rasbian as well).
https://www.instructables.com/id/Simplest-Media-
Ce...
Well, at least for now the system I wrote detects the all your request. And it can reach around 93Mbps
1TB drive I have inserted into the NAS. while transferring with Samba (Window SMB /
Network Disk). This might be the advantage of using
So what next? The software still needs years of the Pi 3B+.
developments in order for it to run smoothly.
Please look forward to the update instructable to this
Currently, the max speed of transfer over 5G WiFi to project next year :))
HDD is around 100Mbps. Which is kind of OK for the
fact that it is just a tiny little computer that is handing