Has anyone used one of these ?
How easy is it to turn one into a portable wifi/wireless (local only) ssd or hard drive battery powered?
How easy is it to turn one into a portable wifi/wireless (local only) ssd or hard drive battery powered?
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Raspberry Pi
- Thread starter max2
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I have, but not the same uses as you are looking for. We use it as a display device for PLC based data. The "disk" is just an SD card.
It's frustratingly slow for most things, but if you know linux, you can probably get it to do what you want.
I'm using a Pi 4 model B with a GPS board attached as a stratum 0 time server. Not a terribly quick CPU, but can be used for specialized tasks with the right attachment. You need to be familiar with Linux to really use one of these.
I use my 4b regularly for PiHole duties (and chip-flashing duties when the need arises).
Mine is non-mobile, so I can't speak for anything other than that.
There is a big community around the Raspberry Pi. A little Googling and you will almost certainly find someone that has done a project similar to most things you would want to do.
The Pi 4 was a big leap forward when it came out as boards are available with 1, 2, 4 or even 8 GB of RAM, have USB 3, and the Ethernet adapter is on a PCI-E lane. On older Pis the Ethernet ran off the USB 2.0 bus and was much slower.
That said, the wifi is not great in my experience and should only be used as a convenience/light duty. Even though the Pi 4 is 802.11ac capable, mine can't connect to 5GHz unless it has line of sight to the access point. And on 2.4Ghz it almost always falls back to 802.11n. Not the best case scenario for a wireless storage device. There are lots of people that use them as a light-weight NAS using the Ethernet connection though.
The Pi 4 was a big leap forward when it came out as boards are available with 1, 2, 4 or even 8 GB of RAM, have USB 3, and the Ethernet adapter is on a PCI-E lane. On older Pis the Ethernet ran off the USB 2.0 bus and was much slower.
That said, the wifi is not great in my experience and should only be used as a convenience/light duty. Even though the Pi 4 is 802.11ac capable, mine can't connect to 5GHz unless it has line of sight to the access point. And on 2.4Ghz it almost always falls back to 802.11n. Not the best case scenario for a wireless storage device. There are lots of people that use them as a light-weight NAS using the Ethernet connection though.
If the wifi is important its best to use USB-wifi -dongle with a proper antenna. Big improvement.