portable streaming media hardware question

[Michael Butash]

I still read books mostly off my phone (samsung s8), and while most are
surprised I'm not blind yet at 43, it works for me, including movies or
whatever.  Each their own.

If you want a wifi-based media server, they are out there, but I've not
seen any I'd invest in that didn't reek of chinese crap, or who knows what
backdoors built into some generic unmaintained linux os.  A pi of some form
would be your best option for control, a pi zero + wifi + battery, and ymmv
how well you tune it for power savings.  If keeping in a pocket of a
backpack, add (very) large external usb battery, voila.

If including any networking, ethernet or particularly wireless, performance
will suck on any mobile-ish chip I find.  Minimal cpu + minimal wifi will
probably not be kind for battery-based usage.  I've looked into "portable
nas's" before, and this was always the issue, regardless of storage
mediums, ranging from spinner disks to ssd.  Maybe different with modern
nvme's or other if an efficient interface, not looked in a bit.

If not using with mobiles, why not just go usb-to-disk then?  Most usb
enclosures are fairly compatible across devices, even android with otg. and
you can get nvme-based usb enclosures that are small, yet as capacious/fast
as you wish to spend to make them.  I've done this with old "still alive"
ssd's of mine as a mule for media/music when I travel, or expendable steam
game volumes.  An amazon vendor screwed up and sent me a small nvme-to-usb
enclosure in place of something else ordered recently, rather tiny and
discrete with usb 3.1.  I kept one to play with...

I've seen PoE daughterboards for a pi even that are intriguing, as I tend
to keep poe available in my house where wired, but not practical for
mobile.  Most enterprises though...

There are also things like a usbarmory, full hackable arm on a usb-stick.
I have one and tinkered with for a bit, just add usb power + as big a sd as
needed, and offers some fair capabilities for diy embedded hacking with a
normal debian distro.  Again pi far more friendly, but make due with what
you have/need.

I still say keeping a filer or two, (synology, qnap, freenas, other) at
home and available via stable vpn is a good fallback as any.  One can (I
think?) always tether off a mobile these days as long as not carrying a
flip phone still, works well for me when I just need to get at some data I
forgot to replicate.

-mb

On Sat, Nov 17, 2018 at 8:27 PM David Schwartz <newsletters at thetoolwiz.com>
wrote:

> FWIW, I just got hold of a "SanDisk Connect Wireless Stick” with 64GB of
> flash memory on it.
>
> Amazon has them really marked down right now:
>
> https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00ZCFYF2W
>
> I’d love to find something like this that was hackable — where I could
> load up my own software and run it.
>
> Been looking around for anybody who’s hacked them, but no luck yet.
>
> A USB3.0 version would also be really nice, since USB2 transfer rates are
> horribly slow for devices with such large capacities.
>
> -David Schwartz
>
>
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