Hardware

Pi Net is Live

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At 19:28 Local time today My Pi Net node Epsilon came online at my friends house and started syncing with the rest of the network.  This is the first remote node in my private cloud network. This note was built using a raspberry pi 2 and a 1 TB USB hard drive that I had lying around. For my data replication I am using BitTorrent Sync 2.x. In order to get the Pi working I had to learn a bit of Linux. This is the first major milestone in my project to ensure my personal data is backed up offsite from my apartment using a secured private cloud and not leveraging any potentially insecure public clouds.

Next up in building out this network will be a second off-site location. I need to finish setting up second Pi and have that node live to have the network be complete.

My Personal Private vs Public Cloud Debate

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I have been pondering my 321 Backup strategy for several months now.  Even before I had a near catastrophic issue with my Sinology DiskStation back in April I knew I wanted a more robust data management plan for my personal files.  I had been using the Sinology Cloud Station software but in my original configuration I was limited since all my data centered around my apartment.  This is convenient but not the safest approach.  I also only really had 2 copies of most of my data.  A really rock solid strategy has 3 copies across 2 sites, and if possible different media types.  I knew i wasn’t doing things good enough.

One solution I toyed around with was BitTorrent Sync.  Back in March I tried it out and had big problems with the UI on my desktop and the web interface on my DiskStation not loading regularly.  I didn’t feel the solution was ready for me to use yet.  I wasn’t confident in the Cloud Station software anymore since I ran into a data integrity issue with it in March.  I had uploaded photos I took in march and noticed that they hadn’t gotten to my Diskstation when they were saying they were syncing off my Desktop.  To make things more confusing the files were syncing to my laptop but not the Diskstation.

That problem lead me to the BitTorrent Sync option and the decision to upgrade to a beta version of the Synology software.  That in turn lead me to some problems I had an my near fatal event with the Diskstation.  So basically in a mission to solve my backup strategy problem i caused an event that a better backup strategy would have solved.

My near loss of all my data on the DiskStation was my wake up call that I needed to really figure some working solution out.  After I recovered (barely) from that incident I focused large amounts of time on solving data strategy.

After my trust was shaken with the Cloud Station data integrity problems I experienced I began to look at public cloud solutions.  I am very concerned about security so I discounted many public cloud providers.  Dropbox, and pretty much any American based solution is just not trustworthy with todays laws.  Dropbox employee’s can even get into your files if they need to regardless of the safeguards they claim to have I do not want anyone being able to get into my stuff unless I let them in.  That security concern lead me to MEGA.  They weren’t US based and they don’t have a way into your data.  Their plans were more expensive than most cloud providers however their 2TB plan more than covered my needs.

One downside was that MEGA didn’t have any built in backup solution for the Diskstation.  That meant I could backup my data to the cloud but the Diskstation wouldn’t be my main data source.  I could still use it as a home server but not the home of my data.  I wasn’t really pleased about that however I couldn’t really find an alternative that worked.  So earlier this spring I jumped into using MEGA as my cloud sync / backup solution.  It had a lot of what i wanted but it wasn’t perfect. It was the best of what was available that worked for me.

I spend a few weeks seeding and confirming my data was correct in MEGA before trying to make a sync copy onto my Laptop.  That was when I ran into issues.  What i noticed was after a while syncing files I would get to a point were the MEGA agent would freeze.  Sometimes after only 70-100 files downloaded.  I would restart the agent and it would do the same thing and copy a few more files and then stop.  I couldn’t really figure it out.  I tried reinstalling, putting the agent on another machine, checking their online help but i was unsuccessful at finding a solution.  This was an issue on top of a general annoyance I had were it would take 5-10 minutes for my admin page on the MEGA site to load.  I don’t know what it was doing but in any browser (chrome, firefox, or safari) i would have the same issue.  that wasn’t a show stopper however add to it that i can’t download a replica of my data onto my laptop I was very concerned.

After a week of tinkering I gave up and had no choice but to revert my decision and go back to Cloud Station software by Synology.  I didn’t want to bother calling MEGA.  I had a confidence issue and even if they could fix the issue in 10 minutes with my level of technical knowledge and online tools i should be able to figure it out.  If i can’t i have concerns about their service.  It wasnt like my problem was complex.  The system just stopped syncing data after a few files.

I wasn’t pleased however MEGA was never the perfect solution for me.  I knew that going into it but thought i could make it work.  In the end I couldn’t so I went back to Diskstation as my primary data store and used Cloud Station to sync.  I kept an eye on the data i synced to make sure i didnt have a repeat issue.  My plan to build another DiskStation and leave it with a friend was back on the table.  That was until about a week ago.

I don’t know what got me to look at BitTorrent Sync again however I installed it again.  I knew they were actively releasing newer versions so I had hoped that what happened the last time was an issue that was solved after a few months.  I was pleasantly surprised to see after some brief testing that the UI display issues appeared to be solved.  I slowly over a few days turned off syncing via Cloud Station and enabled BitTorrent Sync.  I made backups before my changes just in case.  The UI consistently worked on the desktop.  For the web interface on the DiskStation what i learned was first safari wasn’t so great for it.  Second that clearing my cookies for the site typically solved the issue.  With that issue resolved I moved most of my shares over to the BitTorrent Sync app within a week.  I was originally going to try out the system for 30 days and then decide if i wanted to pay for the Pro version.  After going over the 10 share limit for the trial i opted to pay for the 1 year Pro for $39.

As of right now I have my desktop, DiskStation NAS and laptop all replicating data with the new Sync software.  I am at a steady state like were i was back in March.  This steady state took a lot of research and trial and error however now is the harder part.  Now I need to finish this project and meet my objective of a true private cloud with data located in multiple locations.

Using BitTorrent Sync gives me a few options I didn’t have with the Synology centric Cloud Station.  My remote backup locations do not need to have a DiskStation.  I have two old Mac Mini’s that I could provision with external hard drives and drop them in remote locations.  That was my original idea at least. Now I am thinking bolder and cheaper.  If I am successful I will have a prototype to talk about soon.

Raspberry Pi Cloud Node Prototype

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The first phase of my BitTorrent Sync project is mainly complete.  I now have the Sync software running on my Diskstation, Mac Mini desktop and my Macbook Pro laptop.  I have replaced my Sinology Cloud Station app and all files are kept up to date using BitTorrent Sync.  That change gets me to a point were I was before with Cloud Station.  I have access to all my files everywhere however I do not have a complete backup solution since most of the data is only current in two places.  Those places are 15 feet from each other and not really giving me much disaster recovery.

The next phase of my backup / cloud strategy is to have offsite copies of my data or large parts of my data in case of anything happening at home.  I originally planned to do this with a 2nd Sinology Diskstation somewhere.  The costs were very high and that solution limited me to one other location.  When I was thinking of using Cloud Station software from Sinology that solution made sense, however now that I got BitTorrent Sync to work I have other options.
Raspberry Pi & Drive

is bit torrent sync my answer to sync situation

Building My First Raspberry Pi

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I have owned a Raspberry Pi for about a year.  I had high hopes for it but never got around to building anything with it.  A few weeks ago I saw that there was an official Raspberry Pi 2 case and I got to thinking about all the things I wanted to do with my original Pi.  My mind then went wandering that since there was a newer version out and a shinny new case that goes with it I wanted to get the upgraded kit and check it out.  I ordered the Pi 2 and a wifi adapter from Amazon for under $50.  The case is on its way from a different vendor for $10.  All in a computer for less than $60 is not bad.

My new Pi 2 and wireless adapter arrived earlier this week.  Today was the first day that I finally had the time to sit down and install an OS on the Pi 2.  Amelia was napping and MC was at a party with Teagan.  My inlays were visiting but my father in law was relaxing on the couch and was interested in what I was working on so there was plenty of time to tinker.

It took some digging for me to to find a Micro SD card that had enough space on it that would work with the Pi lying around.  It only took a few minutes to download and prep the SD card and get the install going.  I was happy that i still had my old mini keyboard and trackpad that i bought when i was using my Mac Mini as a media center.  I was plugged in and installing the OS in only a few minutes.  The Pi only takes HDMI video input.  I have an HDMI to DVI adapter however I do not have any normal monitors in my apartment.  My desktop computer setup uses an Apple Cinema Display and the only other monitor I have is a USB DisplayPort powered 15″ LCD I sometimes use in the bedroom when working from home.  That meant I had to use the TV to setup the Pi.  Not a big deal and the OS setup and wireless configuration only took a few minutes.

I had some minor challenges getting a VNC server setup but once that was done I had a completely working Pi with remote access running.

My next steps is to see what media center options I have.

Apples Perception Problem

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Apple has a perception problem if when I am out to dinner our waiter is arguing with me that he bought an Android Wear watch because Android is more “open” than Apple.  I am cool if you want to live Android over iOS however liking Android because it is more open means that Google is successful at spinning how their OS is perceived and Apple hasn’t been.

I smartly dropped the topic and two other friends of mine agreed it was not worth the conversation.  MC and my friends wife just rolled their eyes at us (literally or figuratively).  It did all start because MC asked him if he was wearing an Apple Watch this whole thing would never have started.  I thought the whole conversation was pretty funny.

The Apple Watch Worth it, For Me?

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I have had my Apple Watch for a few days now.  It hasn’t been enough time to write an exhaustive review about features, however I am not writing a full technical review.  I am writing about my experience with it to date.

Physically the watch face looks ok to me.  The band is a nice rubber band but its still not great.  I know I bought the cheap band.  Some of the other ones look much better however no super awesome band will take away from the fact that this is still a digital watch.  The watch itself is pretty thick and boxy.  It is well built but not beveled like someone at work pointed out.  Ascetically pretty decent.  Not fantastic but overall not horrible.

Someone pointed out in a review I read that the main things people will really regularly use a smart watch for is 1, telling time, 2 activity tracking, and 3 notifications.  I generally agree with this.  The other functions are nice to have’s but not anything that I would use often. The using the watch for example as a viewfinder for the camera is nifty but i am not going to use that very much.

Using those three main functions I wanted to see how the Apple Watch fared for me.  First as a watch it wasn’t great.  I was just ok.  I personally had issue with the watch taking a while to go on when i moved my wrist to look at the time.  It isn’t a lot of time but it is very noticible.  I also don’t have the best vision so once i am looking at the watch face I have to focus on the hands to know what time it is.  Most people may glance much faster at it and then the waiting for it to light up may not be a big deal.  For me waiting for it to light up and then having to look at it and get the time was just too long.  I know I could possibly solve my issue by just using the digital time however I have been an analog watch person for over a decade now and I don’t want to change now because the Apple Watch doesn’t turn on fast enough.

As for activity tracking I am honestly still confused by the three circles that the watch uses to track me.  Move isn’t really a step count I think.  I am not sure and if i can’t easily figure that out then it is too complex.  Tracking my standing is cool however if the watch knows i am active why does it matter that it knows i am actually standing.  My Up band alerted on lack of activity.  It just seemed simpler.  In any event the activity tracker seems good enough.  The main issue with the watch as an activity tracker is that it is built into the watch.  On one hand that is great.  One less thing to wear.  Of course what if I wear another watch?  Or as in my case I want to track my sleep habits as well like i have been for a few years with my Jawbone UP.  For me if I were to keep the watch it wouldn’t be my only watch so I would need an activity tracker anyway.  My Jawbone UP24 broke last week so I just ordered a new Jawbone UP2.  I will blog about that hopefully soon.  In any event I am not giving up my dedicated tracker so the Apple Watch as an activity tracker is redundant for me.  For others it may be great or the best function now that they can get rid of another wrist band.  I for one am happy to own a basic activity tracker like the up that doesn’t have a screen on it and just tracks what i do since that is the only reason i own it.

The 3rd main reason to have a smartwatch would be the notifications.  This is where my problem lies.  The Apple Watch is good at this. Really good.  In the few days i have had it i have loved the meeting notifications and the ability to snooze them and not forget to be somewhere.  The timer is helpful also however not much easier than just dictating to Siri on my phone.  Telling me about a new text was great, however there were a few that I never got on my watch but did get on my phone.  Overall I liked the notification features of the watch.  That in lies my problem.  This watch along with all smart watches are a huge distraction or so I thought.  I initially got concerned the first full day I had it when the girls were climbing all over me to play with it.  I was concerned about the distraction.  I am trying to adhere to be here now when I am home.  Because of the distraction I was all set to return the watch.  Then I read another blogger who said the notifications on the watch were great because it allowed them to keep the phone in their pocket and actually be less distracted.  I was intrigued.  That was exactly what I wanted.  Because of that the watch got a reprieve and I will keep trying it for a while longer.

 

 

Apple Watch First Impressions

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I know that it is a huge step down from either of my daily wear watches however that isn’t stopping me from trying the Apple Warch.  I am a geek for cool technology after all.  So far first thoughts in the few hours I have worn it are nifty and did I really put down an Onega for this?

Going to see how a few days of use changed my opinion for better or worse.

I am not ashamed that I get excited by LED lightbulbs

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Today MC and I took some of our holiday to goto Home Depot.  We are looking at renovating our kitchen and we needed to investigate some details.  After we finished doing that I wanted to check out the lighting section.  Our fixtures in the ceiling are not big enough to allow me to put in 75 Watt equivalent CFL bulbs.  I have enough trouble seeing on a bright sunny day outside so I can use every extra lumen I can get.  I recently read about a flat LED bulb from Phillips.  The shape of the bulb had me curious if a 75 Watt equivalent would fit in the ceiling fixtures.  The only problem has been that the last Home Depot and every online store I have gone to have not had them in stock.  I am not ashamed to say I was very happy to see that this Home Depot had them in stock.  I picked up 4 of them to see if they would work out.  I was happy to see that the bulbs do fit perfectly in the fixtures were only 60 watt equivalent CFL’s fit before.  In our bedroom it was amazing how an extra 300-400 lumens make the room so much brighter.

Besides the fact that I now have brighter lighting in the apartment, these bulbs shouldn’t need to be changed until after Amelia is out of College.  That is assuming we still live in this apartment.  The LED bulbs will also allow me to dim them.  Master plan is to put in smart dimmer switches that plug into my home automation system.  The possibilities get interesting once i do that.  I hope to write about that once my plans start to materialize, but I am excited by the possibilities.  Yes I said it i am excited about new light bulbs and light switches. I had to think about why that was.  The reason I came to is I always loved Science Fiction.  I don’t yet have swooshing doors that open when i walk up to them but I can have lights that dim depending on the time of day or go off when people leave the room.  That on top of the fact that my iPad seems to do more than those PADD’s in Star Trek The Next Generation my 12 year old self would think I am living in a great Sci-Fi future.  Take that Star Trek!

My Evolving Use of Cloud Storage

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Last year I canceled my pay Drobo subscription. I still have the service but with a lot less storage. At the time I wanted to build my own “cloud” storage system.  In reality I wanted to take my data at home and make it syncable via the internet like a cloud storage provider to my devices were ever i was.  Originally I bought a Transporter that I had hopes would take a 1TB drive and let me sync data to my computers.  That dream lasted about a week.  Their sync software was problimatic for me.  Instead I opted for a Synology NAS DS412+.  The added app’s functionality and redundant storage allowed me to move all my data to the Synology and no longer rely on my aging Drobo(s) as my primary storage system.  The Synology also allowed me to move some multimedia functions i did on my mac mini off to the NAS.  So far I have been very happy.  The Synology Cloud Sync app gives me Dropbox like functionality with my personal stuff.  The other file access options the Synology offers gives me access to all my data.  To do that with any other provider would be prohibitivly expensive because of the amount of data stored on the NAS.

The timeing for this change to self hosting my data was perfect.  I couldn’t realistically do what I am doing now earlier because when I had Time Warner my upload speeds were horrible (1.5mb).  After I moved to Fios my upload speeds jumped to between 25-35mb.  I have no problems using the Synology.

The problem with the Synology is that as much as the NAS itself is designed to last and has some drive resiliance in it, I do not have an offsite backup.  I used to copy my data manually for a while but now a days that is not a good idea.  it is also not feasable with the amount of data i have now.

After leaving Dropbox I read more and more about the potential issues with public cloud providers.  Such as Dropbox knows what you upload and wont keep a duplicate copy of a file of music if others have it.  That means they can (and i believe they have) removed content if there is a DMCA request.  I am also increasingly uneasy about US based hosting providers and the easy the government can get access to data.  I am not a criminal and don’t really have anything to hide in what I am storing however those are not reasons why I should be ok with the ease of government access to my data.  I will talk about that more in another post.  In relation to cloud storage I am glad I do not use Dropbox, however I put myself in the same situation with another provider.

Because I have so much data and I need to really be thinking about a 321 backup sceme I started using Crashplan and Amazon Glacial.  Crashplan I recently canceled because I was having problems with my copy of data on my Drobo that i would sync to Crashplan.  The crashplan app kept thinking that the drobo was disconnected and would keep creating new copies of my data.  When it takes weeks to sync a backup using crashplan having a new copy get created every so often is not good.  With that issue and the fact that the Crashplan Synology app caused my Synology to perform super slow to the point that I uninstalled it I gave up on Crashplan and canceled it.

Amazon Glacial has been good so far.  The challanges with Glacial is that the cost per month varries by how much i use it.  It is also much more expensive than Crashplan for the amount of data i have.  Another challange is getting data out is expensive in the event of a major issue.  Thankfully i havent had to worry about that yet but it is a concern.  The most current concern I have is that Amazon is a US based company and my data is hosted on US servers.  For now I am living with that risk.  My rational side says I dont do anything to warrent the government to want my data however I would rather that not even be an option.

One alternative to Dropbox I have been looking at is Mega.NZ.  They don’t have any access to my data once it is uploaded.  They offer 50gig free.  It is good to replace dropbox for some files i have and to give my most important stuff an offsite backup but it is not enough to backup my music, videos, and photos.  Their 1tb option is doable for me but even that isn’t enough to backup everything.  For now I will continue with Glacial as my backup.  I am investigating working with a friend or two to replica sync our Synologies between each other.  The cost of that may not be worth it but it is an interesting idea.

Synology DS412+

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I have been a user of a Drobo for several years now. It meet my storage needs even if it wasn’t anywhere near as fast as i wanted it to be. I used my desktop computer as a server and had at one point two Drobo’s attached to it. This year my old one started acting up so I am down to one Drobo. I had been slowly upgrading the storage on it but it has become apparent that I needed an upgrade. Jayson suggested Synology since he loved his Synology NAS. I had read good things about them in the past but I wasn’t really sure I wanted a NAS. I ended up buying a much cheaper Transporter in an attempt to solve only one of the storage issues I had. I wanted a private cloud solution. That was a mistake. The Transporter was nice but I had issues with the software. It didn’t do exactly what i was looking for. It was close but just not enough. At that point I started to research all the things i could do with a Synology and I got very interested. It does what i want with private cloud storage as well as tons more features. I was sold and made the investment in one.

Today I received my Synology DS412+.NAS along with 2 4TB drives. I will upgrade to a 3rd drive after i get the system setup. 4TB of usable space wont be enough once I get started. I have already started copying my files onto the new NAS. I also got Plex configured but need to wait till I get my media moved over. That means it will be a few days as the transfer takes a long time.

Once I get all my data on the Synology I need to setup backups of the data back to my old Drobo so I have an extra copy. Once that is done I also have plans to try a cloud backup service. Backing up to one hard drive a year and putting it in offsite storage at my dad’s is not going to work anymore with this much data to backup.