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PostPosted: Fri Aug 14, 2009 12:17 am 
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Remember me? I build the custom VGA cables that allow some of you to tinker and "wow" the community.

I'm looking to branch out a little and get my creative juices flowing with something new and I need your help. I'm brainstorming the idea of creating (and possibly selling) a new product, but I would like your input.

More and more people are building their own WHS servers but DIY solutions fail to achieve the elegance of the HP MedisSmart Server and the Acer easyStore computers. These hardware solutions work nicely in part because of custom hardware solutions that don't exist in a DIY solution--for example LED status indicators, a USB recovery drive, a reset password button, etc.

I am tossing the idea of creating a tiny faceplate that would provide the same functionality except that can be mounted on *any* computer (big and small).

The faceplate would have the following features:
- Four customizable RGB LEDs (customize the brightness, blink, color, when they turn on or off)
- A customizable buzzer (in case of error or when a long operation completes)
- A nice uOLED screen (like the one seen here). This can display status or various operations your DIY solution is working on.
- An option to hook into the computer's reset switch (in case the computer hangs, it can be rebooted via watchdog capabilities)
- One or more customizable push buttons (allow you to boot in recovery mode or simply manually kickoff a backup).
- Temperature monitoring (?)
- << your suggestions go here>>

I know products like this exist but none are as feature complete as this. Also, many existing solutions are not compact.

Do you have any ideas? How much would you pay for a solution like this? I would love to hear from you. Post your thoughts on this forum or if you don't feel comfortable posting, email me at mss_cable_service (at) yahoo (dot) com. I would love to get your feedback.


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PostPosted: Mon Aug 17, 2009 3:19 am 
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I think what you're doing is great. I like the idea of more buttons for the HP products, and the uOLED display. Do you think you can make them modular and stylish at the same time? Because if you could, the HP MSS fans would probably buy and love them.

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PostPosted: Tue Aug 18, 2009 3:20 pm 
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Definitely very interested to see what you have in mind. I should have my DIY WHS completed within the next week, and then I should have a good idea of what features I would like to see, what I miss from the MSS, etc.. Since the server is headless I was already thinking about getting a very small USB type monitor, and it sounds like what you are proposing is much of what I have in mind.

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DIY WHS - 12.5TB and growing, too many gadgets to list

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PostPosted: Mon Aug 24, 2009 10:58 pm 
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cakalapati wrote:
- Four customizable RGB LEDs (customize the brightness, blink, color, when they turn on or off)


Would these LEDs work in the same way as the current OEM boxes (i.e. flash the corresponding LED for disk status/removal, so you know which disk to pull)?


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PostPosted: Wed Aug 26, 2009 9:13 pm 
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The customizable LEDs *could* be tied to the internal hard disks and behave exactly as the OEM HP MediaSmart Server machines. However, I would like an option where this behavior would be completely configurable. For example, if I have a DIY Home Server with two hard disks, I can assign an LED to each hard disk, leaving me with two remaining LEDs. I could have the option to configure the remaining two LEDs to say, "a backup to Amazon S3 is in progress" or "a remote access has been initiated".

The configurable LEDs, (as well as the OLED screen, push button, etc...) would also give addon developers new and interesting ways to extend the functionality to their Home Server.

Of course, if you added the proposed hardware addon to an HP MediaSmart Server, you would probably *not* want the LEDs to be tied to the disks, since this functionality is already in the HP solution.


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