Low Power, Small Form Factor, and High Utility Home Server

Low Power, Small Form Factor, and High Utility

Home Server

(Be careful.  This definitely voids your warranty.)

Part I:  Results Summary - and some pics
Part II: Back Story - Why the heck would you spend your free time doing this?
Part III: Build Detail
Part IV: Future additions

Part I: Results Summary

Before and After.  Note the power and network cables out the back.
The screw tabs on either side are handy for mounting on the back side of my desk.

This project grew fairly organically from humble beginnings as a proof of concept into a mission critical home server.  My family and I use this server everyday for Network Attached Storage, Streaming Video, Movies, and Music, and Business critical phone service.

Internal layout/test fitting (before using shorter cables and before routing the power cable out the back).
Mechanical Pencil shown for scale.

NAS - Network Attached Storage - I use it mainly as a local, encrypted repository for my source code projects, business documents, etc.  (Family Photos and Videos go elsewhere).  For network file storage I use CIFS for Windows clients or SSHFS for Linux and Android clients.  Wrap in a little Deja-Dup/Duplicity, Dropbox, and a little encfs and you get encrypted backups with onsite and offsite storage.  All automatic.  Peace of mind, complete.

Streaming Media - Video and Music - Here I'm using UPnP and DLNA to stream what I want to watch or listen to - to whatever device in the house I'd like.  Additionally I can control any device from any other device in the house.  Here are a couple examples.
1)  Situation:  I'm on the couch.  It's late, I'm tired, I just want to stream a little Jazz from my home server.  No problem.  Step one: Take my phone out of my pocket and launch BubbleUPnP.  Pick the source material (what I want to watch) and the destination (where I want to watch it) and press play.  In this case, I'm going to pick a video from the server to watch, and I want to watch it on the Living room television.  Press play, and the magic of streaming 1080p HD Video is complete.  I can even pause, rewind, fast forward, seek, adjust the volume of the TV - all from my phone.

2)  Situation: The kids are watching something on the TV - Probably Handy Manny or Little Einsteins, but I want to watch a little Formula One that I've saved on the server.  No problem.  Grab my phone or iPad and stream it directly from the server to my device.

Once you get all the components setup, network included, I've found it to be fairly bullet proof.  I just make sure all the material is encoded to H.264/AAC and I can play it on any device.

Business Critical Phone Service - I recently changed jobs within my company.  This has allowed me to work from home much more often than before.  I quickly grew tired of sitting on long conference calls on my cell phone, so I decided to so something about it.  With Google Voice, Asterisk, the FreePBX web gui, and a physical SIP phone, I've got unlimited local and long distance (US/Canada) and a great speaker phone.  This also allows me to put SIP clients on our Cell Phones and use WiFi to make calls via Google Voice.  I use this phone and service every day I work from home.  I've never received a complaint about call quality.  I can't say the same about my Verizon 4G service...can you? :)

Click here to continue reading Part II: Back Story - Why the heck would you spend your free time doing this?

Part I:  Results Summary - and some pics
Part II: Back Story - Why the heck would you spend your free time doing this?
Part III: Build Detail
Part IV: Future additions

Low Power, Small Form Factor, and High Utility Home Server - Part IV

Low Power, Small Form Factor, and High Utility

Home Server

Part IV

(Be careful.  This definitely voids your warranty.)

Part I:  Results Summary - and some pics
Part II: Back Story - Why the heck would you spend your free time doing this?
Part III: Build Detail
Part IV: Future additions

Part IV: Future Plans

Here are some other thoughts on next steps for this project.  

• To Do:  OpenVPN server
• Ideally I'd like to use this as an OpenVPN server.  
• Benefits: PKI Certificates, Very Strong Encryption and Authentication, username, password and Google Two Factor Authentication!  Full L3 VPN tunnel with routed Tun interfaces.  Optionally TAP interfaces for a L2 VPN.
• Cons:  Unfortunately the folks that compiled the linux kernel in the image I used didn't include support for Tun.
• "zgrep TUN /proc/config.gz" gives me  "# CONFIG_TUN is not set".  :(
• Since there's no support for Tun/Tap I openvpn won't start - rightly so as it'd be useless without it.  
• Therefore my options are:
• Compile a new kernel
• not fun
• time consuming
• Run VPN elsewhere in my network.
• Perhaps on my router?
• I haven't decided which way to go yet, but I'm leaning towards the new kernel.  
• To Do:  Make a backup of the microSD card using dd.  
• I've been putting this off for quite some time.  But I think now is a good time as I've got it to a (somewhat) steady state.  
• The data on the HDD changes slowly, but the microSD is fairly static at this point.
• Future project modifications/fine tuning.
• Case mod:
• Initially when I put all the various components into the case, I (stupidly) had the power cord going out one end and the ethernet cable going out the opposite end.  This error wasn't immediately obvious to me as I was fighting with too long USB cables and not enough room in the case for them.  However, once I got it fully assembled I quickly realized my error.  Fortunately this was easily corrected and you can see the results here:

• Heat sink for A10 Chip on MK802. [pick of chip]
• When the MK802 was in it's original / fully enclosed state, it got quite warm.  See Video here.  I didn't measure mine, but 50 degrees Centigrade feels about right.
• With the MK802's back cover removed and placed inside a larger, metal case, I haven't noticed any heat at all and it has been working well for a few weeks.
• There have been a few heat sink mods done on the MK802, here's my favorite, but I'd probably only do the A10 SOC (System on a Chip).  This chip contains both the 1 Ghz CPU and the 500 kHz GPU.
• Add Power Switch - I've got my eyes open for a nice little power switch for this project.  Once found, I'll be sure to integrate one into the back/exterior of the case.
• Power Jack - I'll also add a power jack so that the power cord will not have to run interior to the case to be plugged in.
• Do away with the power brick and run it from Power over Ethernet (PoE) from my switch.  
• Power LED (maybe) - Also contemplating a simple power led (probably on the back) to indicate power-on status.
• USB Camera - mjpeg streamer

EDIT: 7/27/2013

• Added RS232 Serial Console - I thought it would be nice to have a good, old-fashioned RS232 Serial console on this little guy.  So I added a spare USB to Serial Adapter I had lying around: a Keyspan USA-19HS.  The process is very simple:  
• Plug in USB to Serial adapter - kernel takes care of the drivers and you get /dev/ttyUSB0
• A simple init script was needed to enable console logins on ttyUSB0.  

Part I:  Results Summary - and some pics
Part II: Back Story - Why the heck would you spend your free time doing this?
Part III: Build Detail
Part IV: Future additions

Low Power, Small Form Factor, and High Utility Home Server - Part III

Low Power, Small Form Factor, and High Utility

Home Server

Part III

(Be careful.  This definitely voids your warranty.)

Part I:  Results Summary - and some pics
Part II: Back Story - Why the heck would you spend your free time doing this?
Part III: Build Detail
Part IV: Future additions

Part III - Detail:

This section isn't meant to be a step-by-step, how-to document.  It is simply a more detailed description of the various hardware and software components used in this project and some links to various source material I used in the construction.

• Ubuntu 12.04 LTS - Custom ARM build from miniand.com 
• I used Linux dd to put the 1gb Lubuntu 720p version on a 32gb uSD card, then expanded the partition to fill the full card.  I subsequently removed (via apt) all the packages associated with the gui so I just had a headless/console SSH/CLI only server.
• USB to Ethernet 10/100mb Adapter - the firmware and kmod drivers weren't in the image provided by miniand, although finding and adding them weren't that difficult.  Tests with iPerf to my desktop machine on a 100mb switch were close to the theoretical maximum of the 100mb ethernet.  Considering overhead of L2 frame and L3 packet encapsulation, I was happy with the performance of the USB Ethernet adapter.
• Disabled the WiFi adapter once I got wired ethernet working reliably.  
• Added some basic management tools:  screen, mc, iperf, webmin, MySQL, Apache2, Perl, etc.
• Tweaked the fstab to avoid writing too often to the uSD card to avoid wearing it out.
• changed swappiness to zero - this way we use RAM as much as possible but still allow for swapping if necessary.  I do have a swap partition on uSD, but it's never used.   :)
• sysctl vm.swappiness=15
• Added a 320 Gb hard drive with a USB 2.0 enclosure to store the large music (mp3) and video files.  I keep everything in one format so that I don't have to transcode on the fly (especially since the processor is completely incapable of doing it on the fly).  Lots of videophiles scoff at the MP4/M4V container and the H.264/AAC codecs, but I've opted for portability.  I have a mix of receivers that will play the content.  From Full PCs runing Windows 7, various flavors of Linux, iPad, Android Phones, even a LCD TV in the car to keep the kids from driving me nuts on road trips.  All these devices can play 1080p content in H.264/AAC.
• Everything is powered from the Belkin powered USB hub.  The model I chose is currently discontinued, but any powered, High Speed, 480 Mbps hub will do.  
• The power supply for the hub:  
• Input: 110/220VAC
• Output: 2 Amp, 5V DC switching power supply.  
• Switching power supplies are great since they are highly efficient - almost always greater than 90% efficient and they don't suck lots of power even when the device is turned off but the power supply plugged into the wall.
• The MK802's host port is plugged into the MiniUSB port on the hub and is drawing power exclusively from this port as well as serving as the data path for the HDD and the Ethernet NIC.  I've had no issues with under-power situations, reboots, kernel panics, etc.
• SSH with two factor authentication for non-local IPs.
• I wanted to be able to SSH into my server from where ever I happened to be.  But I didn't want to just have an open SSH server either.  Enter Google two-factor authentication.  Loosely following this guide, I setup the SSH server so that it prompts for the Google Auth code first when SSH'ing from non-local-lan IP addresses.  If you successfully enter the correct code, it will then prompt you for your user password.  Coupled with autoban, random script kiddies get shutdown pretty quickly.
• Asterisk v11.4.0 - The default Ubuntu repositories available for ARM (at least on the distribution I am running) didn't have the latest version of Asterisk.  In fact it was two major releases behind. I try to stick to the available .deb packages whenever possible, but this was one of those situation where I couldn't.  I needed to run the latest Asterisk code to keep the Google Voice integration I wanted.  
• I use Google Voice almost exclusively.  I distribute the number on my business card and to anyone/everyone who asks for my phone number.  Hopefully they keep the service around for another 7 years!  One of the great features is the ability to mark callers or texters as spam.  The next time they call they will get a "out of service" message.  WIN. 
• With Asterisk, I can setup a voice trunk to Google Voice and use a physical SIP phone to make and receive calls, conference calls, transfer, etc.
•  After installing all the prerequisites, I compiled the latest version of Asterisk from source on the MK802's ARM proc in Ubuntu.  Following the instructions to compile and install Asterisk and Freepbx (a great web gui for asterisk).  Surprisingly it wasn't all that hard or time consuming.  Everything built correctly with no modifications.  
• I'm using a Cisco 7945 handset (mainly for it's excellent speaker phone) and for my familiarity with the brand and technology. 

Yes, I know...a Cisco Phone, with a Juniper Logo, powered by a Juniper EX2200-C switch, running SIP firmware, connected to Asterisk, and making calls over Google Voice...what can I say?
UPDATE: I now have a Cisco7940 in my garage that is connected to the rest of the network via a Linksys WRT54G running DD-WRT in "Bridge Client" mode.  This way I don't have to run network cable to my garage and I can have a WiFi, wall mounted phone.

• The phone is running the latest 8.x SIP firmware.  The 9.x Code wouldn't register properly with Asterisk, so a downgrade to 8.x was necessary.  I haven't noticed any significant bugs and so far it's worked flawlessly.  
• G.711 u-law is the codec of choice for Google Voice and calls to the PSTN.
• G.722 is also supported in Asterisk and I've successfully tested this with internal calls to/from the Cisco 7945 and software sip clients including:
• SFLPhone on Linux
• CSipSimple - Android
• Voice Quality is Fantastic - I use this everyday I work from home and it's a mission critical part of my job as I live no where near where my customers or coworkers are.  I have never received a complaint regarding voice quality.  The only thing to be careful of is the 3 hour call limit enforced by Google. :)
• To Do:  Setup OpenVPN on my home router:  I'll be able to VPN into my home network and fire up the CSipSimple app on my android phones and have HiDef G.722 calls back home. (It's kinda nice having a fully featured PBX in your house).
• I also added Google Voice trunks for my two kids and my wife.
• They each have their own Google voice number and corresponding extensions.  In/Outbound calls from their extensions or to their Google Voice numbers, use their personal Google voice trunk.
• With a little python scripting magic and some bash scripting, I was able to set and unset the MWI (Message Waiting Indicator) lamp on the Cisco Phone and the various software SIP Clients.  A cron job runs every 5 minutes and checks Google voice for unread voice mail messages.  If there is one, it will create a dummy file in the appropriate directory on the asterisk voice mail directory.  This fools the phone into thinking there's a voice mail.  Asterisk takes care of lighting the MWI.
• If there are no unread voice mails, the script will delete any files in the appropriate voice mail directory.  Asterisk takes care of turning off the MWI.
• As I don't want voice mail on Asterisk (I love Google's voice mail too with Speech to text, email, mp3 download, and ubiquitous access), I don't actually download the mp3.  
• MiniDLNA - UPnP Video streaming everywhere.
• The MiniDLNA daemon is a nice (this was another one that I decided to compile from scratch as the latest version (with the features I wanted) weren't available in the apt repositories.  
• The server and clients use Multicast to announce themselves to the rest of the network, so you may need to monkey with IGMP or IGMP snooping on your L3 devices to get everything working smoothly.  
• Functionally this allows me to sit down on the couch, take my cell phone out of my pocket and start a UPnP app like BubbleUPnP on android or others on Apple iOS.  Once in the app, I select the device I want to stream from: "The Library" - in my case it's the MK802.  Next I select the device I want to stream to: "The Living Room Television" and the file I want played.  The "to" and "from" devices speak directly to each other via unicast and the file starts streaming.  
• Full control is handled from any client device: Volume, start, stop, pause, seek, etc.
• For the less technophillic (or technophobic), I also have a wireless (2.4Ghz RF) keyboard with integrated touch pad attached to the TV MK802IIIs.  This way you can drive Android directly from a keyboard/mouse interface.
• mpd - Music Player Daemon
• This isn't fully implemented yet.  The software is installed, working correctly, and performs well as a proof of concept.  
• I'm still working through the use case and whether or not I will really use it as often as the Asterisk or MiniDLNA features.  Time will tell, but there are a bunch of clients and I'm pretty excited about it.  I'm contemplating using a USB battery pack, TP-Link ML-3020, running OpenWRT, USB Sound Card, and a set of USB Powered Speakers for a home made WiFi boom box.  But that's a project for a different blog post.

Here's a step by step - photo blog of the case build:

All the components - This was how the project ran, on my desk, for about six months.  Eventually I tired of the loose cables.

MK802 - The MK802 comes with it's own power brick with a small barrel connector on the end.  It plugs in right next to the USB connector shown in this photo.  You should note that I'm not using it.  The MK802 is acting as a USB Host (which normally provides power to peripherals), but in this case it is drawing power from the USB hub.

Random close in shot of the external HDD - This was a free usb HDD USB 2.0 HDD enclosure and drive I received at a trade show.  The drive inside is a PATA 2.5 inch 320gb 5200 RPM drive.  It is powered completely from USB.  The drive originally came with the cable you see plugged into it here.  It's a Y-Cable that allows you to power it with 1 Amp at 5V DC from two separate USB ports (0.5A x Two USB ports).  Modern USB ports aren't as limiting, but the USB Specification indicates a maximum of 0.5A @ 5 VDC.

Ooooo, ahhh.  The power supply.  This is now plugged into my Uninterruptable Power Suppy (UPS) so the entire project stays up and powered nicely regardless of any power fluctuations from the Utility. 

Random:  This is a USB battery charger I made a while ago and is still going strong.  I contemplated using this as an additional battery backup.  Just need a USB A Male to USB A Male cable going into the USB hub...instant battery backup.  Alas, I didn't bother.  I still use this as a charger for my cell phone when I'm away from a wall/car charger for too long.

The internals of the battery charger:  On top you have two 18650 Lithium Ion cells wired in series.  I salvaged these from a old laptop battery pack that was "useless".  Usually, even though the pack is dead, there are a few good cells still in the pack.  The trick is extracting them safely. :)   -There is a small circuit board attached to the bottom of one cell for added safety.  The board is the diameter of the cell (18mm) and keeps the cells within their correct tolerances to prolong cell life.  (Limits: High Voltage, low voltage, charge current, discharge current).  Under neath the cells you have three main components.  I purchased these off the shelf from various places.  On the left is the charge circuit: you provide a miniUSB charger (standard stuff) and it takes care of safely charging the cells until full.  In the center is the DC-DC converter.  This takes the voltage of the cells (which varies depending on state of charge) and produces a constant 5.0VDC.  It's rate limited to 1.5 Amps on the input side.  The far right component is simply a USB A Female connector.  This is where you get power from the pack to charge your devices.  There's also a small red quick disconnect so you can remove the battery pack.  The tips of the batteries are dipped in Plastidip to insulate them electrically from the case and the rest of the components.

Standard, 4-Port, USB, powered Hub from Belkin.  The MK802 has to be plugged into the port at the back.  The power cord is a barrel connector.  All the devices are plugged into the front.

Another shot of the USB hub.  Here I'm trying different configurations and layouts in preparation for mounting in the case.  

Upside down - just in case you want to see the labels, part numbers, etc.

MK802 - Here's the back side.  This is the side of the case I'll be removing later for better thermal control.  You'll note the factory drilled holes at the top of the case (furthest from the USB Connector).  This is near the processor.

This is a random box I grabbed off my work's electronic recycling pile.  They pile a bunch of old electronic stuff up and have it hauled away to be disposed of properly.  This is all metal construction (aluminum), quite solid, and had mounting points internally for the circuit board.

Front of the Case.  I have no idea what it did, but it had a couple 1/4" Head phone jacks built in.  I assume it was phone related.

The back side had this "TEL" cut out that matched up perfectly with the USB Ethernet NIC.  The "PWR" hole would also make a good spot to mount a power LED later.

This massive Velcro strip was glued down with industrial strength adhesive.  It took the better part of 5 minutes to remove by hand without scratching the black matte/finish of the case.

The two mounting holes bottom right and top/middle-left allow you to screw mount the whole case to a wall/desk/ceiling/whatever.  The case cover is also held on with six (6) screws.  Quite study.  You could probably drive a truck over this thing.  The right end of the box (in this photo) is not metal.  I'm not sure what it is exactly, but it's definitely some type of composite material.  

You can make out the metal stand-offs that were used to mount a circuit board.  They were limiting the layout inside the case and I needed the extra real estate, so I removed them by bending them off with a pair of channel lock pliers.  The right side of the box (in this photo) is the composite material.  It was also limiting the layout in the box, so I removed the two screws and used a hacksaw to cut off the "extra" piece.  (This photo has the piece still attached.  See later photo for the piece removed)

The upper/top cover.  No modifications made here.

Test fitting the layout and making sure the case closes.

Initial Placement of the power cord.  Meh.  Didn't like it here.

Hmm...does it still work?  Yes!  It's alive.  4.8 Amps here.  Must be booting.

Opening the MK802 - Pop off the top near the USB with a small flat blade screwdriver.

Top removed.

Popping off the back cover.  Note the placement of the retainer clips.  Be gentle and pry slowly - fortunately I didn't break anything, so if I ever want to put it back together...I'm good to go.

Detail shot of the MK802 interior.  Major Chip layout from Left to Right:
WiFi, Two x 512Mb RAM, A10 SOC CPU and GPU, 4Gb NAND Flash

Another test layout.  Since the damn cables were so long I was having trouble fitting everything in there.  Also, the combined height of the USB HDD Enclosure and the USB Hub were too tall for the case by about 3 mm.  This would have caused the case/cover to bend/expand and would apply pressure to the HDD.  I definitely didn't want to apply pressure to a Hard drive spinning at 5200 RPM.

I confirmed with a meter that the case was insulated electrically by the paint, but the remnants of the stand-offs were not.  Sounds like a job for some packing tape!

Lower interior insulated with packing tape.

Removed HDD from the aluminum enclosure.  This gave me and additional ~5 mm of clearance.  This way I could close the case w/o applying pressure on the drive.

Holding everything in place with some 3M Scotch Double Sided Foam.

Can you spare a square?

Three small strips to hold the MK802 in place.

Another test fitting.

Had to add quite a bit more mounting foam to stand up to the pressure of plugging and unplugging the Ethernet cable.

Final mounting.  Everything fit, even with the standard length cables.  I ordered some shorter cables so that I could keep power bearing cables away from the CPU.  Even with the standard length cables, the system ran perfectly under full load.

Not bad.  The case even allows access to the mini HDMI port on the MK802 - just in case you want to run it with a monitor/TV too.

Rookie move:  It wasn't until I took this picture that I realized that the power cord and the Ethernet cable, coming out opposite ends, wouldn't work very well.  Doh.

Fortunately, moving the power out the other side wasn't a big deal.  Again I ensured the power cable was routed as far away from the CPU as possible. 

New view of the front.  If I add a USB Sound Card, I've got plenty of holes to route a 1/8" headphone jack.  :)

Back up and running Asterisk - Providing Google Voice Service to my Cisco 7945!

Next up - Part IV - Future thoughts and plans for project improvement

Part I:  Results Summary - and some pics
Part II: Back Story - Why the heck would you spend your free time doing this?
Part III: Build Detail
Part IV: Future additions

Low Power, Small Form Factor, and High Utility Home Server - Part II

Low Power, Small Form Factor, and High Utility

Home Server

Part II

(Be careful.  This definitely voids your warranty.)

Part I:  Results Summary - and some pics
Part II: Back Story - Why the heck would you spend your free time doing this?
Part III: Build Detail
Part IV: Future additions


Part II: Back story

Like a bunch of other people, when I first noticed the MK802 MiniPC in the form factor of a large USB Drive, I had to snap it up at dx.com.  Although...I did wait for the MK802+ which was upgraded to 1Gb RAM.  At the time of writing it's now going for less than US$40

MK802+ - Stock Photo from Deal Extreme - www.dx.com

Miniand was a great resource for my research efforts.  Check out the Specifications on the Miniand Page.

For those of you unfamiliar with the device, it effectively turns your "Dumb TV" into an Android Smart TV.  Think: Android Tablet on your HDTV powered by a 5 watt cell phone charger.  See the Demo Video Below from the mk802shop on Youtube.



This particular model is a Single Core ARM processor with a GPU and one Gb of RAM, WiFi, on board flash storage and a microSD card slot.  It worked pretty well as an Android TV but the interface was a bit laggy with just the Single Core CPU, especially when updating apps in the background.  But all-in-all I was fairly satisfied with the performance.  I found it to be similar in performance to my original Motorola Droid.

Rikomagic (the manufacturer of the MK802) and other knock-off brands quickly went the way of Moore's Law and raced towards "mutually assured performance".  Later models went from Single to Dual Cores (UPDATE: I'll be picking up a Quad core model soon), bluetooth, and other features were added along the way.  When the "MK802IIIs" came out, (dual core with bluetooth) I snapped that up for my living room TV.  Then the wheels started turning...what should I do with the single core MK802+?

"Low power NAS/Home Server" quickly came to mind.  See below for the process, but I'm happy with the results.

It's Alive!

Here's a pic of the final product, although it took some hackery: a little hardware hacking and a little software hacking.

All components powered from USB Hub
320gb PATA 2.5" HDD
PATA to USB 2.0 adapter from External USB HDD Enclosure
Powerered USB 2.0 High Speed 480Mbps Hub
USB to RJ45 Ethernet Adapter 10/100 Mbps (line rate)
MK802 - 1Ghz, 1Gb RAM, 4Gb NAND Flash on board with uSD slot

Hardware/Software - Short list of features:

Ubuntu 12.04 ARM Linux, UPnP/DLNA Server, Asterisk PBX, NAS, and mpd (music player daemon).  All these capabilities on tap at less than 5 Watts continuous!

Up Next - Part III - Build Detail

Part I:  Results Summary - and some pics
Part II: Back Story - Why the heck would you spend your free time doing this?
Part III: Build Detail
Part IV: Future additions