How to Build a NAS With BananaPi and LEGO Part 1
by hotz_and_plotz in Circuits > Raspberry Pi
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How to Build a NAS With BananaPi and LEGO Part 1
My idea was to built a home NAS that is cheap and has a low power
consumption. It should provide at least 1TB of storage and upload speed should be not as slow as the storage on my router. For my use its not so important to have a RAID system.
The Parts
Heart of the NAS
The first thought was to take a RaspberryPi - it is cheap and has low power consumption. But it only has USB to connect a HDD. Into the bargain it shares its 100Mbit bus with the USB. So reading/writing content to HDD and network traffic uses one bus.
Later I find the specs of BananaPi and it was exactly i was looking for:
- Gigabit LAN
- SATA 2.0 Port
- cheap (about 35 Euros)
- low power consumption
- small size (like RaspberryPi)
The storage
For storage I decided to take a normal 2,5" notebook drive. I took a Samsung ST15000LM006 with 1,5TB of storage.
Additional Parts
To run the BananaPi there is also a SD-Card necessary. I took an available class 4 card I had on stock, but it is possible to take even better cards; the more faster it is, it is much more better.
To power the whole thing up a 5V/2A Power supply with micro USB connection is needed.
The last part you need to build the NAS is a BananaPi-SATA-cable, like many electronic shops offer it.
The Case
Searching the whole web for a case (that could mount the BananaPi and the HDD) does not result into any useful match.
So I decided to build my own NAS case with Lego.
After some prototyping with available Lego parts, I ordered the required parts on the Lego shop (Pick-A-Brick: https://shop.lego.com/Pick-a-Brick).
Watch the video how to assemble the whole case.
The parts you need are:
Quantity Element number Part Color <br>1 6004927 Plate 16×16 grey 1 300526 Brick 1×1 black 2 300426 Brick 1×2 black 1 362226 Brick 1×3 black 1 301026 Brick 1×4 black 1 611226 Brick 1×12 black 2 300326 Brick 2×2 black 1 300226 Brick 2×3 black 1 300126 Brick 2×4 black 2 4181144 Brick 2×6 black 2 6037390 Brick 2×8 black 4 235726 Brick Corner 1x2x2 black 1 306926 Flat Tile 1×2 black 4 416226 Flat Tile 1×8 black 1 302426 Plate 1×1 black 6 302326 Plate 1×2 black 5 362326 Plate 1×3 black 1 371026 Plate 1×4 black 7 366626 Plate 1×6 black 4 346026 Plate 1×8 black 1 447726 Plate 1×10 black 3 302226 Plate 2×2 black 1 302126 Plate 2×3 black 2 383226 Plate 2×10 black 1 244526 Plate 2×12 black 1 4211389 Brick 1×1 grey 2 4211388 Brick 1×2 grey 1 4211428 Brick 1×3 grey 2 4211394 Brick 1×4 grey 1 4211415 Flat Tile 1×1 grey 2 300423 Brick 1×2 blue 1 362223 Brick 1×3 blue 3 301023 Brick 1×4 blue 1 300323 Brick 2×2 blue 1 300223 Brick 2×3 blue 1 4181139 Brick 2×6 blue 4 302423 Plate 1×1 blue 1 302323 Plate 1×2 blue 3 362323 Plate 1×3 blue 5 371023 Plate 1×4 blue 2 366623 Plate 1×6 blue 5 ????* Plate 1×8 blue 1 302223 Plate 2×2 blue 2 302023 Plate 2×4 blue 2 379523 Plate 2×6 blue 3 303423 Plate 2×8 blue 4 303223 Plate 4×6 blue 2 303523 Plate 4×8 blue 2 4199519 Plate 6×6 blue 5 242023 Corner Plate 1x2x2 blue 3 4206330 Flat Tile 1×1 blue 5 306923 Flat Tile 1×2 blue 1 243123 Flat Tile 1×4 blue 2 370026 Technic Brick 1×2 black 1 370126 Technic Brick 1×4 black 2 4211374 Technic Brick 1×10 grey 2 4211137 Technic Brick 1×14 grey 1 4121936 Roof Tile 1×2 45° blue 3 303923 Roof Tile 2×2 45° blue 1 4504380 Roof Tile 1x1x2/3, ABS blue 2 4183060 Plate 1×2 W/Fork/Vertical/End black 2 4144575 Plate 1×2 W/Stub/Along/Upper P black 2 4107761 Plate 1×2 With Slide black 2 6069000 Roof Tile 1×2 45° W 1/3 Plate black 1 4215513 Wall Corner 1x1x1 grey 2 4211515 Wall Element 1x2x1 grey 2 6071299 Wall Element 1x4x1 ABS grey 3 302424 Plate 1×1 yellow 1 6092583 Plate 1×2 W. 1 Knob yellow 2 306901 Flat Tile 1×2 white 1 4211865 2M Fric. Snap W/Cross Hole grey
* It seems that the 1x8 plate is not available in blue anymore in the shop.
But its possible to replace a 1x8 with two 1x4 (or 1x2 + 1x6).
Its also possible to change the color from blue to e.g. red.