Page 4 – The DIY Life

Gweike G2 Pro 30W Fibre Laser Unboxing & Review

Michael Klements

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November 13, 2024

Gweike G2 Pro 30W Fibre Laser Unboxing & Review

I’ve been using diode and CO2 lasers in my home workshop for quite some time. Combined with a 3D printer, they’ve been fantastic for bringing my project ideas to life.

My main go-to laser is the Gweike Cloud 50W CO2 laser, so when Gweike reached out about trying out their latest Fibre laser, I couldn’t help but take them up on the offer.

Gweike Cloud Home Laser Cutter & Engraver

Being a fibre laser, the G2 Pro is quite different to any of the other lasers that I’ve used previously. Not only does it look and function differently but it’s able to cut and mark different materials too.

I was particularly interested in is its ability to engrave metals, with the possibility of engraving stainless steel in colour, and I wanted to see whether I could use it to engrave or mark my 3D-printed parts and enclosures.

Pi 5 Desktop Case For NVMe Bottom Side 2

Here’s my video using the Gweike G2 Pro to engrave on 3D printed parts and colour stainless steel engraving. Read on for the written review:

Where To Buy The Gweike G2 Pro

Gweike G2 Pro (Web Store) – Buy Here
Gweike G2 Pro (Amazon) – Buy Here
Gweike G2 Pro Rotary Tool – Buy Here

Get USD700 / EUR100 Off With The Coupon Code MICHAEL for a limited time

Equipment Used In This Review

USB-C Pencil Screwdriver – Buy Here
Dremel 4300 Rotary Tool – Buy Here
Dremel Compatible Milling Bit – Buy Here

Unboxing & First Look At The G2 Pro

The G2 Pro comes in a branded box with white foam inserts to protect it.

There are two main parts to the laser system, the base and the head, and they’re permanently attached to each other with a braided sleeve.

Included in the box along with the two-part laser is a stand, the power and USB cables, a set of safety glasses, screws and clamps for the work bed positioning guides, a ruler to set the focus height, some basic tools, a flash drive containing the software and a user manual.

Assembly is relatively straightforward. The vertical part of the stand bolts onto the base and the laser head then sits on top of it and is secured with a thumb screw.

This model requires a USB cable to power the electric height adjustment on the stand and another USB cable connects the laser to your computer to control it.

You can use Lightburn or their included GLaser software to control the laser. I’ve used Lightburn on all of my other lasers, so I decided to give the included GLaser software a try for a change. This is quite basic in comparison but has everything you need to get good results from the G2 Pro – and it’s free to use.

With the laser set up, let’s try engraving something.

Engraving 3D Printed Parts

I’ve often wanted to find an easy way to label the ports or IO interfaces on an enclosure, but this has always turned out to be quite difficult to do. With advancements in 3D printing, I can add labels to the enclosure by changing filament colours, but this makes the prints take much longer and you’re quite limited in the detail or clarity of the text that this method is able to produce. You can’t really produce crisp readible text smaller than about 8mm.

PET2Print Running To Convert Bottle To Filament

I’ve experimented with laser engraving onto 3D printed parts in the past with diode and CO2 lasers, but the main issue is that the 3D printed plastic melts rather than being marked or engraved. In some cases you can see the text but it’s because a layer or two of the 3D print has been removed.

Fibre lasers have a fixed head and move the laser dot through a series of rotating mirrors, so they’re able to move orders of magnitude faster than CO2 or diode lasers which need to move a whole gantry. The G2 Pro claims a maximum speed of 15000mm/s while a typical CO2 laser like the Glowforge or Gweike Cloud can only do a couple of hundred mm/s. With a fibre laser, the area being marked is exposed to the laser dot for such a short period of time that the plastic doesn’t have a chance to melt. This is not the only reason that a fibre laser can mark plastics better, the wavelength and frequency of light produced make it much better at marking plastics and metals than CO2 or diode lasers.

To figure out what settings produce the best results on 3D printed parts, we first need to do some testing. There are a lot of variables that can be tweaked but the main three settings are the laser speed, which is how fast the dot is moved across the surface, the laser power which is how much of the lasers strength is used as a percentage and then the frequency, which is how quickly the lasers dot pulses on and off.

I ran quite a few tests to try out different speed power and frequency settings, which I won’t bore you with too much but essentially my findings were that the laser’s speed needs to be quite fast, the power needs to be very low and the frequency works best at the higher end of the range that the laser can handle.

With the G2 Pro, these settings are a speed of 7000mm/s, a power of 15% and a frequency of 150kHz.

The settings also vary depending on the type and colour of filament being used but these work as a good starting point for most dark PLA filaments, which is what I tend to use most often.

Given that the laser essentially decolours or bleaches that filament, it works on a range of coloured filaments but obviously won’t be able to mark white or very light colours.

I prepared these 3D-printed side panels for my Pi 5 NVMe case and I then drew up a circuit board pattern and some text to engrave onto them.

There is a red outline marker that helps guide the placement of the components on the bed and on this model, the laser height is electrically adjustable to set the focus distance to the top surface of the object being engraved.

The G2 Pro flies through engraving the intricate circuit board patterns. My video at the beginning of the post shows the laser running in real-time and this engraving would have easily taken 20-30 times longer on a diode or CO2 laser if I were engraving onto a material like wood or acrylic. A second pass helps clean up any dark spots and makes the text and lines a bit more defined.

After a little over a minute for both passes, the engraved circuit board pattern came out looking really good.

The text is also nice and clear. These small labels are only 2mm high, so this would have been impossible to 3D print.

I really like how much character can be added to plain surfaces by being able to mark 3D-printed parts.

Engraving Stainless Steel

Next, I want to try colour engraving on some stainless steel.

Colour engraving might seem strange since the laser isn’t depositing anything onto the surface of the metal, but you can create several different colours by again varying the power and frequency of the laser dot. As far as I can tell this works by applying a fairly precise amount of heat to the surface which causes it to oxidise and the level of oxidiation determines the colour.

This also requires a lot of experimenting but I found that I could get a nice green colour for the Raspberry Pi logo’s leaves by using 50% power and a frequency of 20kHz, I could get a red colour for the raspberry using 50% power but at 30kHz. On the opposite side panel I put a similar circuit board pattern but this time I’ll be trying to engrave it in a dark red/gold colour which I’ll do at 40% power and 30kHz.

The G2 Pro can engrave stainless steel but can’t cut it, so I had to make the rest of the cutouts to turn these into side panels for my Pi case using a dremel.

I think the colours came out well. I’m not sure how durable they’ll be but the graphics seem to be quite well etched into the surface.

I’m really happy with the results of both of these tests, I now have a way to mark or label 3D-printed parts without having to build the labels into the printing process. The ability to add multi-coloured features to stainless steel parts is going to open up some interesting design opportunities.

Circuit Board Pattern Engraved Onto Side Panel

Other Features Of The G2 Pro

The G2 Pro can engrave other metals like brass, gold, silver and aluminium and also other materials like dark acrylic, plastic, leather or painted surfaces. There are also loads of tutorials online for creating awesome-looking 3D engraved coins from brass blanks. The one below by Justin Laser is really good.

It also has an optional safety shield that allows you to use it as a handheld device on materials that you can’t place on the bed. You can remove the head of the G2 Pro from the stand and the shield clips onto the bottom of it. The shield spaces the head at the correct distance from the material so that the laser is in focus.

G2 Pro Lens Cover For Engraving Onto Large Objects

Fibre Laser Limitations and Drawbacks

The G2 Pro and other fibre lasers do have some disadvantages when compared to diode or CO2 lasers, so you need to look at what your particular requirements are.

Fibre lasers generally have quite a small bed size because of the mirror head design. The working area on this version of the G2 Pro is 150mm x 150mm. This is large enough for engraving onto jewellery, mugs, coasters etc. but can be limiting for larger projects.

A fibre laser is also not designed to do any cutting, it is primarily a marking or engraving laser, so you’ll need to use precut blanks for your projects.

Lastly, the wavelength of fibre lasers is quite short and as a result, the laser energy is partially absorbed by organic materials like most woods, making it difficult or in some cases impossible to engrave. For similar reasons, it also only works on dark leather.

Final Thoughts On The Gweike G2 Pro

So if marking 3D printed parts or engraving onto metals in a range of colours is something you’d like to get from a laser, then have a look at the G2 Pro. It’s priced from $1,800, which is quite a lot for a workshop or small business tool but it’s priced very competitively when compared to other lasers of a similar power and the G2 Pro is faster and more accurate than these.

Let me know what you think of it in the comments section below and if you’ve got any use cases that you’d like me to try out when using it.

Khadas Mind 2 Unboxing & Review

Michael Klements

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October 31, 2024

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Over the past two years, I’ve tried two of Khadas’ single board computers which were aimed at being compact and low power computers for home server or media centre projects.

More recently Khadas have come up with something equally small but a lot more powerful. The Mind 2 is an ultra-small, dockable mini PC with a couple of unique features. This is the second generation in the Mind series that brings in the Intel Core Ultra 5 and 7 series CPUs to replace the i5 and i7 CPUs in the original.

Where To Buy The Khadas Mind 2

Khadas Mind 2 Core Ultra 5 (This Review) – Buy Here
Khadas Mind 2 Core Ultra 7 (More Powerful) – Buy Here
Mind Dock – Buy Here
Mind Graphics – Buy Here

Equipment Used In This Review

USB-C Pencil Screwdriver – Buy Here
Infiray P2 Pro Thermal Camera – Buy Here
Video Capture Box – Buy Here

Unboxing and First Look

The Khadas Mind 2 comes in a minimalist white branded box with an image of the Mind 2 on the top and the name on either side.

It is available in two processor options, this review is done on the less power Intel Core Ultra 5 version. It is also available in an Intel Core Ultra 7 version, and that version has two different RAM options, 32GB and 64GB.

Inside the box, first up we’ve got the Mind 2. Underneath it is a sleeve with the manual and warranty card.

Lastly, beneath that, we’ve got a USB-C power cable and a 65W USB-C power adaptor.

It’s quite clear that they’ve tried to replicate Apple’s packaging with the minimalistic white box and even the way they’ve packaged the power cable and adaptor. It’s not done cheaply though, the packaging feels like you’re unboxing a premium product.

The palm-sized Mind 2 weighs just 435grams. It feels well-built in an anodized aluminium unibody enclosure.

It’s quite small too, it measures 146mm long, 105mm wide and is just 20mm thick.

Ports & Features On The Mind 2

Taking a look around the Mind 2, on the front we’ve got a single power button with an integrated power indicator LED. This doesn’t seem to do anything out of the box, so either it is disabled without power connected or that battery is empty on arrival.

Each of the two short sides have symmetrical cooling vents on them, one is an air inlet and the other an outlet.

On the back, we’ve got a Thunderbolt 4 port which doubles up as the USB C power input. Alongside it is a USB 4 port, then we’ve got an HDMI 2.1 port which will do 4K 60Hz and then two USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports. So they’ve included all of the ports you’d need to use the Mind 2 as a standalone PC without a dock if you’d like to. Above the ports are some more ventilation holes – also air inlets.

Notably, and perhaps disappointingly for a workstation, it doesn’t have any wired networking ports, but it does have WiFi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3 connectivity. To get wired networking you’ll need to use a USB adaptor or their dock which we’ll discuss a bit later.

Similar to the PCIe port that I recently tried out on the GTi 14 Ultra, the Mind 2 has an expansion port on the bottom. This is a proprietary port that they’ve called the Mind Link.

This port has the bandwidth of a PCIe Gen 5.0 x 8 port, allowing up to 256 GT/s. It supports USB 3.2 Gen 2, HDMI 2.1 and it allows for up to 10A of input power.

The Mind 2 has a 512GB NVMe SSD but also has an additional M.2 slot to add a second SSD which is accessed through an easy-to-use magnetic cover on the bottom. The slot is limited to 2230 size drives though.

The text on the bottom looks good framed in the cover plate but I’m not sure it’s the best idea to have the serial number on an easily swappable component.

Opening Up The Mind 2 To Take A Look Inside

The bottom cover is held in place with four screws underneath the rubber pads. Internally, the only upgradable component is the NVMe SSD.

The Mind 2 has an Intel Core Ultra 5 125H Processor which is essentially a CPU, GPU and NPU all on a single chip. This is a mobile processor with 18MB of cache and 14 cores;

4 Performance cores that can run at up to 4.5Ghz
8 Efficiency cores that can run at up to 3.6Ghz
2 Low-Power Efficiency cores that run at up to 2.5GHz

It has an integrated Intel Arc GPU with a maximum frequency of 2.2GHz and this supports hardware-based ray tracing.

It’s also got 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM running at 6400 mega transfers per second. The RAM is non-removable so can’t be upgraded.

Unlike any of the other mini PCs I’ve tried on this channel, the Mind 2 comes with a built-in 5.55Wh battery. Being relatively low capacity for the high-performance CPU we’ve got in the Mind 2, this battery isn’t designed to run the Mind 2 without a mains connection but rather allows the Mind 2 to be used like a laptop in sleep mode in case of a power interruption or to move it between locations like a home or office. You can run the Mind 2 on the battery but it’ll only run for about half an hour.

So the Mind 2 is like the brains of a laptop that is designed to be transportable between workstations without shutting down.

Cooling is achieved by a single fan with two air inlets, one on the back and one on the side, and a single air outlet along the opposite side.

First Boot & Performance Benchmarks

The Khadas Mind 2 comes with a clean install of Windows 11 Home. There is an application called Mind that comes preinstalled but this is responsible for the battery management like most laptops would have.

Opening up the performance monitor we can see our CPU is an Intel Core Ultra 5 and it’s running at a base speed of 3.6GHz. We’ve got our 16GB of RAM running at 6400Mhz and our 512GB storage drive. Our GPU is an Intel Arc and it’s sharing 9Gb of RAM.

To test the Mind 2, we’ll run two benchmarks. The first is Geekbench to test the CPU and GPU performance.

The CPU benchmark took about 5 minutes to complete. We get a single core score of 2,163 and a multicore score of 11,024. These results are not far off the results I got on the GTi 14 Ultra which has the more powerful Core Ultra 7 CPU.

Similarly to that CPU, single-core scores are fairly average but the multicore score is quite good.

The GPU benchmark took just over a minute and we got a score of 28,270. This is quite good for an integrated GPU but is quite a lot lower than the results on the Core Ultra 7 CPU. It should still be powerful enough to do some low-level 1080p gaming on it, well test that out in a bit.

Next, let’s run Furmark to test the computer’s GPU and thermals. I ran the Vulkan 1.3.289 test at 1080P.

We get a score of 2079 with an average of 34fps. Interestingly Furmark reported the maximum GPU clock frequency reached to be 1.8GHz, which is quite a bit short of the 2.2GHz available.

1080P Gameplay On The Mind 2

Now that we’ve run a few benchmarks to test performance, let’s try running Counterstrike 2 and Doom Eternal on it.

In Counterstrike 2, we get around 60fps with graphics settings on High. Turning graphics up to Very High, the fps drops to a little under 50. This is not a particularly demanding game but is still a fairly good result for such a small PC without a dedicated GPU.

Next, I tried running Doom Eternal. I had all graphics settings on Ultra Nightmare and Ray Tracing turned off. I was getting about 60fps fairly consistently which is also pretty good. Turning ray tracing on mid-game first caused the game to crash as it seemed to run out of video memory, but turning it on before loading the game then worked and we lost about 10fps.

So the Mind 2 by itself handles 1080P gaming fairly well with the integrated Intel Arc graphics, both games were very playable with mid to high graphics settings and also ran ok with graphics settings maxed out. This is also only the base version of the Mind 2, there is a more powerful option available and you can add on the graphics module to further boost gaming performance.

One thing that did get quite annoying was the loud fan. If you’re just doing light work on the Mind 2 it’s barely audible but under load like when playing games, it can be quite noisy. There is an audio clip of the fan noise in my video at the beginning of the post.

Power Consumption & Power Management

In terms of power consumption. The Mind 2 uses around 9W when idle on the desktop with the battery fully charged and it goes up to a little over 45W with the GPU and CPU being used during gaming. The idle consumption is really impressive for a fairly powerful mini PC. This is around the same as the low-power N100 computers I’ve tried.

If we pull the power cable out of the back, the Mind 2 goes into sleep mode. This allows you to move it to another workstation or take it home and when you plug it back in you can carry on right where you left off. There’s no need to close documents or applications.

You can also disable going into sleep mode and it’ll run on the internal battery. In this mode, I was able to get about half an hour of run time before the battery was depleted.

Final Thoughts On The Khadas Mind 2

So that’s my overview of the Mind 2, but we’ve only really had a look at half of the complete product and this is where I have mixed feelings about it. Sure, you can use the Mind 2 as a standalone mini PC like this, but at $799 for this entry-level version, you’re paying quite a lot for a mini PC that is missing quite a few features.

That’s where the Mind Link come in. Khadas have already developed a Dock and an external GPU solution for the Mind series and they’re currently working on a portable display too. These each add functionality to the mini PC to suit a particular application.

The Dock makes it easy to add and remove the Mind 2 to a home or office workstation and the external GPU adds an RTX4060 to it for gaming. Both of these are fantastic options to have, but they do also add quite significantly to the total price. You’d be in for almost $2,500 if you bought the top-spec Mind 2 and Mind Graphics module!

Overall, the Mind 2 is well-built and has a number of features that I really like. I like that it is powered through a USB-C cable and the integrated battery allowing it to be used more like a laptop adds to its flexibility in size and form factor. It really is a palm-sized mini PC, and quite a powerful one too.

I don’t like that it doesn’t include a wired network option and because they’ve tried to make it very compact, it is also not upgradable (other than increasing storage). I personally don’t mind the proprietary Mind Link interface as this type of hot-swappable high-speed interface would be very difficult to achieve otherwise, but I would like to see their expansion options include some more versatile modules like a x8 PCIe port that can be used to add your own GPU or PCIe cards to. This would negate some of the concerns around spending $1000 on a graphics module that is not compatible with any other platform.

Let me know what you think of the Khadas Mind 2 in the comments section below.

Elegoo Mars 5 Ultra Unboxing and Review

Michael Klements

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October 23, 2024

1

The Mars 5 Ultra is the latest revision to Elegoo’s successful Mars series of SLA printers. Its product page advertises an impressive set of features like 9K resolution, automatic build plate levelling, resin level detection and remote monitoring via an integrated AI camera.

The Mars 5 Ultra retails for $270 on Elegoo’s web store and $285 on Amazon at the time of writing this review, which makes it an attractive option as an entry-level or budget-friendly printer.

Where To Buy The Mars 5 Ultra

Elegoo’s Web Store – Buy Here
Amazon US – Buy Here

Other Equipment Used In This Review

Elegoo Photopolymer Resin – Buy Here
Elegoo Mercury Plus Wash & Cure Station – Buy Here

Unboxing The Mars 5 Ultra

The Mars 5 Ultra comes horizontally packaged rather than vertically like I’m used to seeing with other SLA printers. It is well protected with white high-density foam inserts protecting all the major components and a clear wrap around the acrylic cover to prevent scratches.

Like with most SLA printers, the Mars 5 Ultra comes pre-assembled. You only need to install the build plate and resin vat, which are easy to do and typically part of the printing process.

Included in the box is the Mars 5 Ultra, its build plate and power supply along with some accessories to get you started with your first prints.

These accessories include a USB stick with software and test print files preloaded, a WiFi antenna, Allen keys and screws to replace the resin vat film, gloves, face mask and paper filters for handling the resin and a drip tray to contain spills when removing prints. It also includes a license code card for Chitubox Pro.

The design of the Mars 5 Ultra, and especially the cover, gives it a futuristic cyberpunk feel. A lot of the design style feels unnecessary, but I think it works and I quite like the look of it.

First Look Around The Mars 5 Ultra

The Mars 5 Ultra feels like a solid and well-built printer. Its construction is primarily metal, with only the front panel and clear cover being plastic.

The build plate attaches to the z-axis arm with a toolless clamp, which is solidly built and easy to use. They claim that the Mars 5 Ultra is ready to run out of the box and doesn’t require any manual calibration or levelling of the build plate – we’ll discuss this a bit later when we try a test print.

The z-axis arm runs on a single linear rail and like most printers these days, has a silent stepper motor driver.

The resin vat is held in place with a thumbscrew on each side and features a typical “max level” indication line. It has also been designed with pouring points on both sides, which is good to have.

A notable feature of the Mars 5 is that the resin vat is designed to tilt during prints. This tilting motion peels prints off of the film from one side to the other rather than just pulling up on them until they “pop off”. This allows the Mars 5 to get slightly better print speeds and reduces the likelihood of adhesion issues.

It also includes a 720p AI camera. This camera allows you to monitor prints remotely and create timelapses of your prints as they are completed. The AI part of the camera includes warp detection and empty build plate detection – both of which assist in alerting you of any failed prints.

Interaction with the Mars 5 Ultra is done through an integrated vertical colour touchscreen on the front. The user interface is simple and refined – I could find all of the settings that I was looking for as well as start and stop prints fairly intuitively.

In terms of IO, along the right-hand side, we have a USB type A port to plug flash drives into for prints, the power switch, the DC power input and the WiFi antenna.

Elegoo have also included a drip tray with the Mars 5 Ultra, which snaps into place around the resin vat. This has been added to catch drips or spills that may land on the printer when you’re removing prints from the build plate, preventing drips or spills from damaging the LCD or the vat tilting mechanism. This is a nice feature but the plastic that it is made from feels more like packaging than an actual product.

Mars 5 Ultra Specifications

Printer Dimensions: 260mm [L] x 268mm [W] x 452mm [H]
Build Volume: 153mm [L] x 77mm [W] x 165mm [H]
LCD Resolution: 8520 x 4320px (9K)
LCD Size: 7″
Pixel Size: 0.018mm (18um)
Z-Axis Precision: 0.02mm
Print Speed: < 150mm/h
Connectivity: WiFi and Direct USB
Control Panel: 4″ Capacitive Touchscreen

Printing Out The Included Test Print

The Mars 5 Ultra includes a rook demo print on the supplied flash drive, which has been customised with Elegoo’s logo and the Mars 5 Ultra name on it.

Before each print, the Mars 5 Ultra runs through a self-test routine, which is displayed on the LCD display as a checklist. It also warns you not to touch or bump the printer during this routine.

Part of the routine includes self-levelling or calibrating the build plate level. I didn’t have any issues with this during my testing but a lot of the failed print issues that I’ve seen users talk about online have been due to the lack of information around manually levelling this build plate or at least checking it during setup. I know Elegoo have aimed at creating a “ready to run” printer, but it would be really helpful to include some troubleshooting advice or steps in the included manual.

I had no issues with printing out the rook test print using Elegoo’s smokey grey translucent resin. It was however quite difficult to remove from the build plate – but I guess this is better than losing the print during printing.

The build plate design is a lot more rigid than the typical single-point support, but this does have a disadvantage in that it is more difficult to clean in between each of the support posts.

The Rook test print came out really well, aside from the difficulty in getting it off of the build plate.

Slicing My Own Test Print In Chitubox

Included on the flash drive that comes with the Mars 5 Ultra are two versions of Chitubox – Chitubox Basic and Chitubox Pro.

Chitubox Basic is free-to-use software that doesn’t require a license.

Chitubox Pro requires an annual subscription but Elegoo include a 3-month license with the Mars 5 Ultra. This is a nice inclusion but Chitubox Pro is quite expensive ($170 per year) if you’re not frequently making use of the pro-level features (likely for business use) and the included 3-month license is quite short.

The Mars 5 Ultra has built-in WiFi which allows it to do firmware updates without being connected to a PC, but also allows prints to be sent to it wirelessly using the ChituManager plugin. This plugin also allows you to use the Mars 5 Ultra’s integrated camera for remote monitoring.

The model that I chose to slice was a Lattice Benchy by DaveMakesStuff. This too can be printed directly on the build plate without having to be printed at an angle and should be printed without supports.

I used Elegoo’s recommended settings for their ABS-Like Smokey Black Resin, which was readily available on their website – both under the printer’s product page and on their resin’s listing.

The lattice structure printed out impressively well considering the fine detail. The benchy came out flawlessly. There was no visible warping or distortion and the high resolution makes it very hard to see any

The location of the camera is useful in that it is out of the way when you’re topping up the resin vat or removing prints, but being forward facing and with the dark lid, the quality of timelapse videos is not great. That said, it is easy to use and most casual users would be happy with the results.

I also tried printing out a

Final Thoughts On The Mars 5 Ultra

The Mars 5 Ultra impressed me quite significantly. Having not used a new SLA printer in a couple of years, it was great to see how quickly you can get set up and running, and the print quality is amazing. There is no more fiddling with bed levelling and calibration issues to resolve, it just works.

The Mars 5 Ultra includes all of the higher-end features of Elegoo’s flagship Saturn 4 Ultra but at a much lower price point. You’re getting a very capable printer with integrated WiFi and a camera for only a little over $250.

I like the automatic build plate levelling although it would have been nice to have some instructions included in the manual on how to manually level the build plate if you run into issues with it. The manual could also do with a bit more troubleshooting guidance, although there is a lot of support available online.

The integrated AI camera is a great feature for its automated detection features although its placement and lack of internal lighting within the enclosure leave the timelapse video quality being quite poor.

Overall, I think the Mars 5 Ultra is a great product at an even better price point. You wouldn’t be disappointed with the Mars 5 Ultra as your first SLA printer or as an upgrade to an older printer.

LincStation N1 All-SSD NAS by LincPlus, Unboxing & Review

Michael Klements

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October 9, 2024

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LincStation N1 All-SSD NAS by LincPlus, Unboxing & Review

Today we’re going to be taking a look at the LincStation N1, a 6-bay all-SSD NAS by LincPlus. It is marketed as being great for a home or small office, being silent, powerful and easy-to-use. Let’s find out if it stands up to these claims.

Here’s my video review of the LincStation N1, read on for my written review;

Where To Buy The LincStation N1

LincStation N1 – Buy Here
Crucial P3 Plus NVMe SSDs – Buy Here
Crucial 2.5″ BX500 SSDs – Buy Here
QNAP 2.5G Ethernet Switch – Buy Here
Power Meter – Buy Here
Infiray P2 Pro Thermal Camera – Buy Here

Unboxing and First Look

The LincStation N1 comes in a fairly minimalistic black branded box.

Inside the box, the NAS is on the top in a white protective sleeve.

Underneath that is the Software License key card and a user manual, and in the bottom compartment is a screwdriver along with screws for the drives, as well as a 60W power adaptor and mains cable.

Unlike most NAS products, this one doesn’t come with an Ethernet cable.

Taking a look around the LincStation N1. The enclosure is a 2-part design with the top being matt black plastic with a LincPlus logo on it and the bottom being a single piece of aluminium with turned up edges. The top and two sides don’t have any ports on them.

At the front we’ve got a power button which doubles up as an LED power indicator on the right.

Underneath the power button is a this flip down cover, and beneath that is a single USB type C port and two SATA drive bays.

There is also a row of seven drive and network activity LEDs above the USB C port.

Underneath the flip-down cover is an LED strip. This looks like an RGB strip as it includes other colours when booting up but then just pulses in a dark blue while the NAS is running.

At the back, we’ve got a 3.5mm audio port, which is a bit of a strange addition for a NAS, alongside it is an HDMI 2.0 port, then we’ve got two USB 3.2 gen. 2 ports, a 2.5G Ethernet port and a 12V power input.

Underneath the ports are some ventilation holes for the internal fan.

The bottom has two rubber strips on it that act as feet, and has two drive bay covers for the NVMe drives.

Size wise, being an all SSD NAS, it is quite compact. It measures 21cm long, 15cm wide and 3.5cm high. They advertise the LincStation N1 as being the same footprint as an A5 sheet of paper.

I quite like the look of this NAS, it looks like something you wouldn’t mind having visible on a desk rather than hidden away in a rack or behind closed doors.

Drive Bays and Specifications

The six drive bays are a little different to most other NAS’s I’ve seen, which either have 2.5” SATA bays or M.2 bays for NVMe drives. This NAS has a combination; two 2.5” SATA drive bays that can be swapped out at the front, and then four M.2 bays for NVMe drives that are installed though covers underneath it. Through these six bays you can install up to 48TB of storage.

I guess technically you could use the SATA bays for mechanical drives if you wanted cheaper storage capacity, but that would sort of defeat the object of an all flash storage NAS.

The LincStation N1 powered by an Intel N5105 CPU. This is a 4-core CPU running at 2.0GHz. While this means that it’s not as powerful as a NAS like the F8 SSD Plus that I recently reviewed, it costs less than half the price. It is currently available for $399 from their web store or on Amazon.

It’s got 16GB of DDR4 RAM and 128GB of flash storage. The RAM is soldered to the motherboard, so is non-removable, but it’s the maximum that the CPU supports in any case.

The NAS also has Bluetooth 5.2 and WiFi 6 although we’ll talk about the limitations of these a bit later when we look at software.

Installing SSDs Into The LincStation N1’s Drive Bays

Now let’s install some drives into the LincStation N1’s drive bays so that we can test its performance.

I’m populating the two 2.5” drive bays with Crucial BX500 drives and the four M.2 drive bays with Crucial P3 Plus drives.

These are just for testing, you should use NAS-grade drives if you’re going to be using them in a NAS long term.

The 2.5” drives are mounted into the trays using the included screws and the trays then slide into place like traditional NAS drive bays.

The M.2 bays are PCIe gen. 3 x 1, so a fairly slow interface by today’s standards. This is likely constrained by the CPU, but the speed would easily saturate the 2.5G network connection in any case. This limitation is something to keep in mind though, as you could save yourself some money by going for older and slower drives without affecting overall performance.

The bays only support 2280-size drives and have tool-less clasps that hold each drive into place. I really like this feature, it makes installing the drives a breeze.

The covers also act as heatsinks for the drives so there is a large thermal pad on each. You’ll also need to remember to remove the protective film from each pad before replacing the covers.

Now we just need to plug in a network cable and power cable, then press the power button to boot it up.

Setting Up Unraid For The First Time

Unlike a lot of other NAS manufacturers, LincPlus haven’t tried to develop their software for the LincStation N1, but have rather shipped it out with an included Unraid License.

I think this is a good choice. A product can have the greatest hardware and be let down quite significantly by its software. We’ve seen this over and over with SBCs that try to compete with the Raspberry Pi. Unraid has been around for a while and is a reputable software package for NAS setups.

When you first boot it up, you’ll need to enter the included Unraid license key to activate it or you can run a trial of the software for 30 days before activating it.

The Unraid installation is about as clean as it gets. LincPlus haven’t preconfigured anything or installed any supplementary applications. This is probably a pro for an experienced user but may be a con if you’re new to Unraid and are still finding your way around.

You’ll then need to assign your disks, start your array and then create a network share.

Unraid also allows you to install plugins, configure and run Docker Containers, create and run Virtual Machines and they have an App Store with over 2000 apps available to install to add functionality to your NAS.

There are some downsides and limitations to Unraid in the N1. The standard version of Unraid supplied with the N1 doesn’t support the available WiFi and Bluetooth features, so you can’t use either of these as part of the core NAS functionality. You can however use them through a virtual machine.

The more significant issue is that Unraid is focused around physical mechanical drives and hasn’t really been optimised to work with SSDs. There is a risk with some SSDs that they may do on device data management which would damage the parity data. Unraid’s recommendation is to use SSDs as cache drives and mechanical drives for the array, which is obviously not the purpose of the N1.

Testing The Performance Of The LincStation N1

On the product page, LincPlus claim transfer speeds of up to 800MB/s. This is likely referring to the maximum read speed that can be achieved from a single NVMe drive. While this is important in some respects, you’re not going to get anywhere near this speed over the 2.5G network connection. You’d be lucky to get real-world results of around 280MB/s.

You could potentially improve the network speed by adding a second 2.5G ethernet adaptor to one of the USB ports to take advantage of link aggregation but this is just a limitation of the NAS to keep in mind. Most people aren’t running more than 2.5G in their homes in any case.

Testing transfer speeds with a small 256 MB file I got average writes a little over 250 MB/s and reads of a little under 270MB/s.

With a larger 1 GB file I got average writes of a little under 250MB/s and reads a little under 260MB/s.

And with a very large 64GB file I got average writes around 240MB/s and average reads a little over 250MB/s.

So quite consistent results across the three file sizes. Reads come fairly close to saturating the 2.5G network connection and writes are just a little slower.

I then tried running a real-world file transfer test in Windows 11, transferring a large 70G video file.

Writing to the NAS we get a very consistent write speed of a little over 280MB/s and reading from the NAS we get a similarly consistent but slightly slower average transfer speed of about 255MB/s.

Noise and Power Consumption

In agreement with LincPlus’ claims, the LincStation N1 is almost silent. It obviously doesn’t have any mechanical drives in it, which eliminates drive noise. If there is nothing else running in the room, you can faintly hear a fan running when it is on but it is impressively quiet. I also couldn’t hear or measure any difference between the fan noise at idle and when reading or writing to the drives.

Under a full CPU load the fan is a bit more audible but it’s still pretty quiet. You can’t hear it from more than 2 meters away in a quiet room.

Power consumption on the N1 is also great. It uses just 11W at idle and this only goes up to around 17-18W when reading or writing to the drives.

Final Thoughts On The LincStation N1

Overall I think the LincStation N1 is quite a nice entry-level all-flash storage NAS package. It has a well-balanced set of features and although it is limited by the single 2.5G Ethernet connection, this is likely good enough for most home or small office use cases. I think their decision to include an Unraid license rather than developing their own software is a really good one and you’ve obviously still got the flexibility to go with a different OS if you’d like to.

Let me know what you think of the LincStation N1 in the comments section below.

I Tried 3 New Hats For The Raspberry Pi 5

Michael Klements

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October 2, 2024

4

I Tried 3 New Hats For The Raspberry Pi 5

Today we’ve got three new hats for the Raspberry Pi 5 that we will be trying out. I’ve used variants of each of these on my Pi 4 setups for a few years now and I think these are the most handy hats to keep around for my Pi projects.

Here’s my video trying out and testing these Pi 5 hats, read on for the write-up;

Where To Buy These Pi 5 Hats

X1003 NVMe Hat – Buy Here
PoE & NVMe Hat – Buy Here
X1200 UPS Hat – Buy Here

Tool & Equipment Used:

Raspberry Pi 5 – Buy Here
Sabrent Rocket 4.0 – Buy Here
Pi 5 Power Supply – Buy Here
Pi 5 Active Cooler – Buy Here
USB-C Pencil Screwdriver – Buy Here

X1003 NVMe Hat

The first hat we’re going to be looking at is the X1003 NVMe hat, which you can pick up online for around $15.

I tested three other NVMe hats a few months ago, but this was one that I was told about after doing those tests.

I primarily like that it is compact and simple. This leaves a lot of room around the hat for cooling. The main drawback with the others that I’ve tested is that the bottom mount ones tend to enclose the drive and cause the drive to run hot and the top ones tend to restrict airflow to the cooler.

This hat keeps both the drive and fan open.

There is one strange design choice and that is that it requires an active cooler to be installed on the Pi because it is supported along its edge by picking up on one of the active cooler’s screw holes. I don’t know why they went with this approach rather than picking up on one of the Pi’s mounting holes with a standoff. I assume they wanted to keep those free.

In terms of drive options, you can only use 2230 and 2242 size drives in it. Like the other NVMe hats that I’ve tried, it connects to the Pi with an FPC cable and gets additional power from the GPIO pins.

I tested this hat using James Chambers Pi benchmarks script and a Sabrent Rocket NVMe SSD.

I got an average score over 3 tests of 42,457. This is a good result given that I’ve left the Pi’s PCIe port running at the default Gen 2 speed. It is comparable to this drive running at Gen 2 speeds in the other hats that I’ve tested.

James-Chambers-Pi-Benchmark-Script-Score

The hat will also fit into the official Pi 5 case with the fan plate removed and the active cooler then takes care of keeping the Pi’s CPU cool.

PoE+ & NVMe Hat by HackerGadgets

The next hat that I tested is an NVMe and PoE+ Hat by HackerGadgets which you can get online for $43.

This is a power over ethernet or PoE hat designed for the Pi 5 that isn’t much larger than the official PoE hat for the Pi 4 but also includes an M.2 port for an NVMe drive that makes use of the Pi 5’s PCIe port.

This hat allows you to make use of a PoE switch or PoE injector to power your Pi using the connected network cable rather than having to use a separate power adaptor. It simplifies your setup and allows you to use fewer cables. If you’re running a headless arrangement like you would on a NAS or Pi Hole project then you only need an Ethernet cable and your Pi is good to go.

It’s PoE+ or PoE type 2, which means it can handle a higher power delivery than the original PoE standard. Typically up to 25W instead of the original 12.5W.

This hat’s switch mode power supply can supply 5V at up to 4.8A, so up to 24W, and it’s got an additional USB C power port on the back that you can use to power or charge an external device.

Its also got a cutout in the PCB that you can either mount a 30mm fan to or install over the active cooler and it’ll still allow airflow through to the fan.

Hat-Still-Provides-Path-For-Airflow-To-Cooler

Like the previous hat, this one is also compatible with 2230 and 2242 size drives.

The hat plugs into the GPIO pins to supply power to the Pi and it’s got an FPC cable to connect the NVMe drive to the Pi’s PCIe port. It’s also got a 4-pin connector at the front that picks up power from the Ethernet port.

With the hat installed, we don’t need to hook up a USB C power cable to the Pi as it’ll get power from the Ethernet connection.

Upon booting up I got a warning that the supply is not capable of supplying 5A. This comes up because the Pi isn’t able to carry out the power delivery negotiation with the supply while booting up because the hat is powering it through the GPIO pins.

You can disable this check in firmware by adding the below line to the boot.conf file;

PSU_MAX_CURRENT=5000

Change-Power-Settings-To-Remove-PD-Negotiation

To test this hat, I ran two different tests, one on the NVMe drive and one on the CPU.

I again tested the NVMe drive using James Chambers Pi benchmarks script and a Sabrent Rocket NVMe SSD. I got slightly better results than with the previous hat with an average score over three tests of 43,550, again at gen 2 speeds.

Running-Pi-Benchmark-Script-To-Test-Drive-Speed

I also tested it by running CPU burn to load up the CPU to make sure that the PoE power supply was capable of handling a full CPU load. It ran for 10 minutes without any issues and also without thermal throttling. PoE hats tend to run quite hot but this doesn’t seem to have a significant effect on the Pi.

This hat is also compatible with the official Pi 5 case.

PoE-and-NVMe-Hat-Fit-Into-Official-Pi-5-Case

X1200 UPS Hat

The last hat is very similar to one that I used in my Pi 4 server build a while back and that’s an X1200 UPS hat which you can get for $42.

This hat stores power in two 18650 cells on the bottom and provides uninterruptable power to the Pi 5 through the Pi’s GPIO and power circuit pins.

Also on the bottom are some additional 5V power supply connectors and a power button.

On the top we’ve got a USB type C power input which takes the Pi 5’s official 5V 5A power supply. We’ve also got a charging LED and battery voltage indicator. There are two more status LEDs on the other edge. The Pi 5 one tells you when the Pi 5 powered on and the one alongside it tells you when the hat is on.

Battery-Level-Indicator-and-Charging-LED

The hat uses some cleverly designed pogo pins to make contact with the Pi’s power and GPIO pins from underneath the Pi. With this hat on the bottom, you’ve still got space on top of the Pi to put an active cooler and a top mounted NVMe hat.

Connect-To-GPIO-Pins-From-Underneath-The-Pi

I’m going to add the X1003 NVMe hat to the setup as my boot drive.

Once installed, the Pi can boot up from the batteries if they’re charged and you then provide power to the UPS rather than to the Pi to keep them charged.

There is a script that you can install that’ll provide UPS stats to the Pi via the I2C interface. This will also tell the Pi to safely shutdown if the battery voltage drops below a configurable level.

Install-Script-To-Get-UPS-Status-and-Safe-Shutdown

When mains power is removed, the UPS continues to provide power to the Pi, like in the beginning when it was running off the batteries only. The length of time that it can run will obviously depend on the capacity of the batteries and what you’ve got connected to your Pi but you should be able to get an hour or two from a good set of 3000mAh batteries.

This hat is too big for the official case but there are a couple of other case options available for it, including one of my own designs.

This-Hat-Is-Too-Thick-For-The-Official-Pi-5-Case

Let me know in the comments section if you’ve used any of these hats for your own projects or if there are any other hats for the Pi 5 that you’d like me to try out.

Beelink EX Docking Station For The GTi 14 Ultra

Michael Klements

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September 25, 2024

2

Beelink EX Docking Station For The GTi 14 Ultra

A couple of weeks ago, I tested the Beelink GTi 14 Ultra, a powerful mini PC with a full-size PCIe port underneath it. At the time Beelink said that this was for a dock that they were working on, which would allow an external GPU to be used with the PC, but it hadn’t launched yet. So I tested the interface using my own 3D printed adaptor that screwed onto the bottom of the pc along with a PCIe riser and an external power supply.

Beelink have now completed the dock, so that’s what Im going to be sharing with you in today’s video.

This is the EX Docking Station and it is compatible with the GTi14 and GTi12 series PCs at the time of writing this post.

Here’s my video of the EX Docking Station, read on for my write-up;

Where To Buy The Beelink EX Docking Station?

Beelink EX Docking Station – Buy Here
Beelink GTi 14 Ultra – Buy Here

Tools & Equipment Used

USB-C Pencil Screwdriver – Buy Here
Infiray P2 Pro Thermal Camera – Buy Here
Video Capture Box – Buy Here

Unboxing & First Look

The Beelink EX Docking Station comes in a white branded-sleeved box that is a lot bigger and heavier than I was expecting it to be.

Inside the box you get some manuals, the EX Docking Station, 8-pin power connector cables, a power supply cable, brackets to hold the PC and GPU in place and then a pack of screws and a PCB that looks like an M.2 adaptor for a wifi module.

The EX Docking Station measures 179mm wide, 65mm high and 225mm long.

This is a bit more than just a PCIe adaptor or riser, Beelink have integrated a few other features which make it versatile and really easy to use.

First up is the obvious main feature, the PCIe x8 port which allows you to connect an external GPU to the PC.

Alongside that are two 8-pin power supply ports for the GPU. These are fed from an internal 600W power supply.

There is also a separate port to power an external fan if your GPU requires this.

Next to those is a USB2.0 port. I think this is a bit of a strange addition, it would have been a lot more useful if it were a USB 3.0 port or USB type C port but I guess you could use this for a keyboard or mouse dongle.

Then there are two antenna ports that you can use if you add an internal WiFi adaptor.

At the front is the power button and a power indicator LED alongside it.

At the back, we’ve just got the power supply input and some ventilation holes.

What GPUs Can You Plug Into The EX Docking Station?

The open design and relatively powerful integrated power supply mean that you can use a high-end GPU with the docking station.

Beelink claim that you can run a GeForce RTX 4090 in it. I don’t have a 4090 to test this claim, but it seems like they have sized the power supply at 600W specifically to make sure that high-end cards like these can be used since the 4090 requires around 450W. As shown earlier, the dock only has two 8-pin power ports available though and some cards like the 4090 require 4. So you may need to use additional adaptors to supply power to your card.

Another thing to keep in mind is that the dock is designed for 2-slot cards, so you’ll probably need to remove or not use the retaining bracket to use a 3-slot card like the 4090 but there looks like there is enough room for it.

Internally, the EX Docking Station also has another PCIe 4.0 x 1 expansion port in the form of an M.2 port. You can use this port to add an NVMe SSD or use the small included adaptor board to add a WiFi module.

Installing A GPU On The Dock

Now that we’ve had a look at what the EX Docking Station has to offer, let’s get a GPU plugged into it and try it out. I’m going to be using the same Radeon RX 6600 GPU that I used with my 3D-printed adaptor.

First, we need to install the mounting bracket on the back of the dock.

The GPU plugs into the PCIe port and we just need to hook a single 8-pin power cable up to it.

We then need to remove the cover over the PCIe slot on the bottom of the GTi 14 and then slide it onto the PCIe adaptor on the dock.

A retaining plate then holds the PC in place.

Testing The EX Docking Station

To test the EX Docking Station, I tried running two benchmarks that I ran previously on the stock GTi 14 – Geekbench GPU and Furmark.

In Geekbench we get a GPU score of 78,310, which is unsurprisingly significantly higher than the 37,460 we got on the stock setup.

Running Furmark, we get a score of 7,033, which is also much higher than the 1,920 we got with the stock setup.

To test gameplay, I opened up Counterstrike 2 and set all of the graphics settings to Very High at 1080P.

We get around 150 fps quite consistently. This is about 2.5 times what we’d get on the integrated GPU, which is already quite powerful for a mini PC.

In Doom Eternal with all graphics settings on Ultra Nightmare and Ray Tracing turned off at 1080P, we get over 200fps. This is about 3 times faster than the integrated GPU and the RX 6600 is a pretty low-tier budget GPU.

Can You Use Other PCIe Cards With The Dock?

You don’t have to use this docking station to add a GPU to your PC. Since it uses a standard PCIe interface, you can use it with other PCIe cards too.

I actually used this dock to add a 10G Ethernet adaptor to the GTi 14 recently to do my testing on the Zimacube Pro and the TerraMaster F8 SSD Plus. This is obviously quite an expensive way to add 10G Ethernet to your PC, but it does give you a lot of expansion options for other cards too.

Final Thoughts On The Beelink EX Docking Station

The EX Docking Station retails for $159 on their website at the time of writing this post. You are paying a premium on what is largely a 600W power supply and a PCIe riser with some added features, but I don’t think it’s prohibitively expensive.

Being a first-gen product there are two minor drawbacks that I’d like to mention.

When you use the docking station with the GTi 14 Ultra, you still need to use a power cable for the PC as well. You’ve then got two power cables to plug in and two power buttons to press to boot the PC up. It would have been nice to have these a bit more integrated in some way.

I also would have liked to have seen an easier way to add and remove the PC from the dock. Something like a toolless lever or snap-in lock to hold the PC into place like a laptop dock would make it far easier to remove the PC, which is kinda of the point of a dock.

Other than those two drawbacks, I think this is quite an innovative product. Mini PCs have always been held back by their GPU performance and with this dock, you can add a high-end GPU to an already powerful mini PC to create a good gaming setup that also offers the flexibility to be very portable when you need it to be.

Let me know what you think of the dock in the comments section below.

I Tried The New TerraMaster F8 SSD Plus, Is It Any Good?

Michael Klements

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September 18, 2024

1

A few months ago I built an all-SSD NAS using a Raspberry Pi 5 and a quad-SATA hat from Radxa. By adding a 2.5Gb Ethernet adapter, I managed to get pretty good transfer speeds out of it. I got about 260MB/s writing files to the NAS and 200MB/s reading files from the NAS.

Following that video, TerraMaster reached out about a new all-SSD NAS that they’re launching this week. This is the new F8 SSD Plus. It’s their first NAS that is designed to be used with SSDs only and internally it’s got space for 8 M.2 NVMe drives.

There are two versions of this NAS. I am testing the higher-end F8 SSD Plus, which has an i3 processor and 16GB of RAM and will retail for $800. They also have a lower-spec F8 SSD with an N95 processor and 8GB of RAM for $600.

Here’s my video review and testing of the F8 SSD Plus, read on for my write-up;

Where To Get The F8 SSD Plus?

TerraMaster F8 SSD Plus – Buy Here
Crucial P3 Plus NVMe SSDs – Buy Here

Tool & Equipment Used

Power Meter – Buy Here
Infiray P2 Pro Thermal Camera – Buy Here

Some of the above parts are affiliate links. By purchasing products through the above links, you’ll be supporting this channel, at no additional cost to you.

Unboxing & First Look At The F8 SSD Plus

The F8 SSD Plus comes in a black branded box that already gives you the impression that this NAS is much smaller than a traditional NAS that takes physical drives.

Included in the box is the F8 SSD Plus along with a Cat6e Ethernet cable, although not a particularly long one, a power cable for the power supply, a screwdriver and screws for installing the NVMe drives, the power supply and a set of 8 heat sinks for the drives. This is quite a nice inclusion which I wasn’t expecting to see.

First up, this NAS is quite small. It’s not much bigger than a single physical 3.5” drive that a traditional NAS would use.

It’s a minimalistic design, which I quite like. There is nothing on the front and the two sides bear the TerraMaster logo.

On the bottom, we’ve got two 50mm PWM fans which draw air in through the bottom and exhaust out of the top of the NAS.

On the back, we’ve got the barrel jack power input, an HDMI 2.1 port, a 10Gb Ethernet port, two USB 3.2 ports and a USB type C port.

On the top, we’ve got some ventilation holes and the power button.

They say that this is a toolless design and it certainly is to open it up, we’ve just got a single thumb screw at the back. This allows the internal chassis to slide out to access the board and drives. I wasn’t sure whether the board slides out of the top or down and out from the bottom, but out from the top is the answer.

I think calling it a toolless design is a bit of a stretch as you need to secure your storage drives with a screw and they include a screwdriver for that. There are some ways they could have made it truly toolless but this is nitpicking, it’s not difficult to install the drives.

Internally we’ve got a single 16GB stick of DDR5 RAM running at 4800MHz. You can upgrade this to 32GB.

The CPU is under a large black heatsink at the bottom, directly above the fans. The F8 SSD Plus has an 8-core Intel i3 N305 processor with a maximum frequency of 3.8GHz. This is a 2023 chip which has got 6MB of cache and a TDP of 15W.

Then we’ve got our 8 M.2 NVMe ports. These are all PCIe gen 3 x 1 ports. This may sound disappointing at first glance, but each of these ports are individually capable of saturating the 10Gb network connection, so there shouldn’t be any issues with this speed. Through these 8 ports, we can connect up to 64TB of storage.

Installing NVMe Drives In The NAS

Now that we’ve taken a look at the internals, let’s get the drives installed.

I’m using four Crucial P3 Plus drives. These are just for testing, if you’re going to be using drives in a NAS long term then you should get NAS-grade drives that have better endurance.

First, we need to fit a heatsink to each drive. They’re held in place with an included band on each end. I don’t particularly like this solution as I’m not sure how long these bands will last, but I do like that they’re fitted directly to the drive and the heatsinks look like they’re good quality.

Installing the drives is easy, they plug into the M.2 port and a single screw holds each drive in place.

With all four drives installed, we can slide the board back into the enclosure, plug in our power and network cable and boot it up.

TerraMaster’s Lastest Operating System TOS 6

By default, the F8 SSD Plus is set up to install and run Terramaster’s latest operating system called TOS 6. It’s based on Linux but they’ve given the web interface a Windows 11 look and feel.

On the first boot, you’ll be guided through a setup process that will set up a drive pool and install TOS 6 onto the available drives. The drives are set up using their TRAID system. There is a bit to go through in understanding how this works but it’s essentially quite similar to RAID 5, providing a good balance of redundancy and storage capacity but it also allows for the flexibility to use different capacity drives within the array.

TOS has done away with a traditional dashboard-style layout with desktop icons and have instead added a taskbar along the top with little tooltips that come up to guide you around.

It feels fairly intuitive to use. It’s even got a sidebar to monitor system stats, which can be modified by dragging and dropping modules, and it includes a notification bar.

I really like their drive management and backup options. You have a lot of options for local and cloud backup. You can also set up an email address to automatically send notifications to if errors with drives or processes are detected.

I also like their file management windows. Again, this interface has a Windows 11 look and feel, but that makes it intuitive. You’ve got right-click options for files and folders, you can create shares directly from this interface.

You can even preview some files like photos directly from the file management window.

You can quickly search for settings or features from the settings window, so you don’t have to waste time looking through menus.

TerraMaster have also included a nice array of apps that you can install to add functionality to your NAS.

If you can’t find what you need with these apps, you can also quite easily install docker to deploy your own containerised apps. The CPU in this NAS has a fair amount of headroom to run these, so the F8 SSD Plus will work well as a small home lab.

Additional-CPU-Headroom-For-Docker-Install

That’s a brief overview of TOS 6. If you don’t like their software you can also install your own operating system like TrueNAS or Unraid on the NAS if you’d prefer.

Testing The F8 SSD Plus’ File Transfer Speed

Next, let’s do some transfer speed tests. I first used AJA System Test to automatically test the transfer speeds and then I did a real-world test on Windows 11.

AJA System Test

Transferring a small 256MB file, I got fairly consistent writes a little over 1000MB/s and reads around 850MB/s.

Going up to a 1GB file, we get very similar results – writes a little over 1000MB/s and reads around 850MB/s.

Transferring a 64GB file started off much slower than the previous two tests. Writing started off 500MB/s but then ramped up during the first half of the transfer and eventually settled at a little under 1000MB/s for the remainder of the write. Reading the 64GB file was stable but was again slower than with the smaller files. Reading remained at a bit under 750MB/s. So both reads and writes were about 100MB/s slower with the large 64GB file.

Windows 11 File Transfer Test

Running a real-world transfer test in Window 11, copying a large 70GB video file to the NAS, writes started off saturating the 10Gb Ethernet connection at 1.1GB/s. This dropped off quite quickly though and eventually settled at a little under 650MB/s for the remainder of the transfer.

Reading the same 70GB video file from the NAS was much faster. Reading stayed at 1.1GB/s for most of the transfer, with just a couple of short dips.

So, overall my testing proved pretty good performance for file transfers. Like with my other NAS reviews, this is straight out of the box with the default setup. I haven’t done any tweaking or optimising of settings.

Fan Noise On The F8 SSD Plus

The F8 SSD Plus is very quiet as it doesn’t emit any physical drive noise. Fan noise is also minimal, you can hardly hear the fans running when at idle. The ambient sound level in my testing room is about 32 decibels, so the fans running at low speed barely register.

When writing to the drives or doing CPU-intensive tasks, you can hear the fans spin up but they’re not much louder. The sound level goes up to about 39-40 decibels.

So this NAS is ideal for a home or small office where you’d have the NAS in the same room that you’re working in.

F8 SSD Plus Power Consumption

Keep in mind that power consumption will obviously vary with the type and quantity of drives installed, so you may get slightly different results. With my 4-drive setup and with the CPU under no load, we get a power consumption of 14W.

This goes up to 35W when writing to all four drives and saturating the network connection.

TOS 6 does have an option to put the drives to sleep if there is no activity for a period of time and this should further decrease the idle power consumption. In their documentation, they say that this will bring power consumption down to 9W. This seems reasonable from my test results.

Limitations of the F8 SSD Plus

Most NAS products in this sort of price point would come with a secondary network connection, so it would have been nice to see a 2.5Gb network port alongside the 10Gb port as a secondary port or failover. You could add an external network adaptor to one of the available USB ports like I did with my Pi NAS, so this is not a major issue.

Each M.2 port also only supports PCIe gen 3 x 1 drive speeds. This sounds slow, but the limitation has to do with the available PCIe lanes on the processor. The i3 N305 processor has only got 9 PCIe lanes available. TerraMaster have distributed these over the 8 drives and the 10G Ethernet port, providing one lane each. I think they’ve made a fair choice here as the drives would individually saturate the 10G port in any case. So you’re not actually losing drive speed. This is worth keeping in mind when choosing drives though as you can save some money by buying older and/or slower drives that work well with the available interface.

The only other limitations I could find are that the F8 SSD Plus doesn’t have ECC memory and is missing native support for ZFS. Neither of these are particularly big concerns, they’re just worth noting.

Final Thoughts On The F8 SSD Plus

Overall I think this is a great product and I haven’t found any significant issues with it. There are a few features that would have been nice to have had included since it is quite pricey, but once you add an NVMe adaptor and 10Gb Ethernet adaptor to a mini PC of a similar size and performance, you’ll probably be around this price point too.

Let me know in the comments section below if you think I should have a go at building my own single board computer based NAS with similar functionality to see how it compares. Also, let me know what you think of the F8 SSD Plus.

I Tried The ZimaCube Pro, Is This The Perfect Home Server?

Michael Klements

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September 11, 2024

0

I Tried The ZimaCube Pro, Is This The Perfect Home Server?

Today we’re going to be taking a look at the ZimaCube Pro. This is a new device from IceWhale, the company that have already brought us the Zimaboard and Zimablade that I’ve reviewed previously.

The Zimacube Pro is the second device from their Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign that was successfully funded in December last year. It is marketed as being a personal cloud server with easy-to-use software and has more powerful hardware than the standard Zimacube from the same campaign.

Here’s my video review of the ZimaCube Pro, read on for the written review;

Where To Buy The ZimaCube Pro

Zimacube Pro – Buy Here
Crucial BX500 SSDs – Buy Here
Crucial P3 Plus NVMe SSDs – Buy Here

Tool & Equipment Used

Power Meter – Buy Here
Infiray P2 Pro Thermal Camera – Buy Here

Unboxing and First Look At The ZimaCube Pro

The ZimaCube Pro has a 12th generation Intel i5 processor instead of the Intel N100 processor in the standard cube. This allows for faster RAM, better PCIe expansion, faster M.2 ports and significantly better connectivity. It comes a price though, the Pro version currently retails for $1099.00, which is a significant step up of $450 from the standard version that retails for $649.00.

Included in the box are some basic tools, a Cat6a network cable, a Thunderbolt 4 cable, a power adaptor and some screws for mounting the drives into the drive bays.

Ports and Interfaces on the ZimaCube Pro

Taking a look around the Zimacube Pro. On the front, we’ve got two USB 3.0 ports, a USB type C port, a 3.5mm audio jack and the power button.

Below that, under the ventilation grill, it’s got six SATA drive bays which can take 2.5” or 3.5” drives and a 7th tray that has four M.2 ports for NVMe drives.

The 7th tray also has customisable and programmable RGB lighting with an onboard controller that you can load custom firmware onto.

The ZimaCube Pro also has two internal M.2 ports – one of these being for the OS storage drive. So that’s a total of 6 SATA ports and 6 M.2 ports, which allow up to 164TB of connected storage.

This ventilation screen that covers the bays looks great when it’s installed but could really do with a small tab or recess on the edges to make it easier to remove.

The sides each have ventilation holes at the top and four screws holding the top and bottom covers in place.

On the back of the ZimaCube Pro, we’ve got a reset button, the power input, two Thunderbolt 4 ports, a 10Gb Ethernet port, two 2.5Gb Ethernet ports, two more USB 3.0 ports, a DisplayPort 1.4 and an HDMI port.

The Thunderbolt 4 ports allow the Zimacube to be used as a DAS (Direct Attached Storage) device. This is a feature that is not commonly found on consumer-level products, so I’m interested to see how well this works. They claim that you can get up to 2GB/s transfer speeds through this port, so we’ll definitely be testing that out!

Internally, as mentioned earlier, powering the Zimacube Pro is a 12th gen Intel Core i5 processor, it is the 1235U version with 10 cores running up to 4.4GHz. This particular one has 16GB of DDR5 RAM, but this can be expanded up to 64GB.

We’ve got dual PCIe slots, one being PCIe 4.0 x 4 and the other PCIe 3.0 x 2. These allow you to add expansion cards like a GPU, an AI acceleration card or a transcoding card to improve the Zimacube’s performance for your particular workflow.

Our 256GB M.2 NVMe OS drive is partially hidden by the cooler.

The M.2 port near the back is populated with the 10GB Ethernet adaptor and a short tail to a daughterboard with the physical port on it.

One of the main complaints early users have had is with the ZimaCube Pro’s cooling solution. It is claimed to be quite loud and not very effective. IceWhale have responded to concerns by providing a free issue improved cooling solution for backers – which is supposedly quite easy to swap out. We’ll test this against the currently installed cooler to compare the results.

ZimaOS – The Intended Operating System

As with other IceWhale products, it is intended to be used with their own operating system. In this case, it comes preloaded with ZimaOS. This is very similar to CasaOS which is loaded onto the ZimaBoard and ZimaBlade, with a few features tailored to the ZimaCube like RAID support and remote access functionality.

You’re not locked into using their software though. You can fairly easily install other operating systems like OpenWRT, pfSense, TrueNAS or Unraid.

ZimaOS is effectively a skin for docker with a bit of additional functionality and a good support community. It’s got a range of preconfigured apps that are very easy to set up and you can configure your own apps through the web dashboard or by loading your own .yaml files.

Testing The Cooling Solution

Let’s start by testing the old and new CPU cooling solutions. I haven’t done anything to the stock cooler, I’ve left it as it arrived. Some users reported having their CPU cooler installed with the plastic protector left in place on the contact surface. To test the thermals, I’m going to first try a 50% load on the CPU and see what the does to the CPU temperature and then I’ll try a 100% load.

Old Cooling Solution

The temperature is already sitting quite high at idle. We’re at 2% CPU utilisation and are already running at over 40°C in a 20°C room.

At 50% load, the temperature spikes to over 90°C in about 2 seconds, which is really quite poor. The CPU starts thermal throttling almost instantly, dropping the clock frequency down to 3.5GHz and then further to 3.3GHz about 45 seconds later. This brings the temperature down a bit but obviously comes at the expense of performance.

CPU-Temperature-On-Original-Cooler-50-Load

Thermal-Throttling-50-Load-Original-Cooler

At 100% load, it’s practically useless for sustained use. The CPU temperature spikes to 100°C before the utilisation gauge can even increase and again is significantly thermally throttling, this time down to just 2.4GHz.

CPU-Temperature-on-Original-Cooler-100-Load

Thermal-Throttling-100-Load-on-Original-Cooler

So this cooler is really undersized or just doesn’t work effectively – confirming other users concerns.

I have to also mention that the fans for the drive bay of the Zimacube are quite loud. I haven’t installed any drives into the bays, and I’m in an air-conditioned room, and the drive bay fans already spin up occasionally. So their curves must be set very low. That’s not necessarily a bad thing and you can adjust them in the BIOS. It’s just not great if you’re going to have the ZimaCube Pro near where you’re working.

The CPU cooler is audible but isn’t that loud when idle. When it spins up under any sort of load then it is quite load.

New Cooling Solution

Now let’s get the new cooler fitted. The cooler comes with a bracket for the underside of the motherboard but I believe it uses the same pattern and screws so we shouldn’t need to use this.

The old cooler is quite easy to remove. You just need to remove the four screws holding it in place and unplug the fan.

The new cooler has a preapplied phase change thermal pad on it so we don’t need to reapply the thermal paste. I cleaned the old thermal past off of the heat spreader to give it the best chance of success.

They say that it should be installed with the fan at the back of the Zimacube, directed towards the front, which I’ve done.

Now let’s boot it up and see if it performs any better.

At idle after booting up, we’re now running about 8-9°C cooler at 33-34°C.

Again starting with a 50% load, it now takes about 10 seconds to run over 90°C. This is a significant improvement over the previous cooler, but it still starts thermal throttling under sustained load.

With a 100% load, we again hit 100°C and started thermal throttling almost instantly. It sustains a slightly higher CPU frequency for a short while longer, but not that significantly.

Thermal-Throttling-100-Load-on-New-Cooler

In terms of fan noise. The new cooler runs a little louder at idle but is a little quieter under full load. So not a significant difference.

The new cooling solution makes some improvements to the thermals but if you plan on doing CPU intensive tasks for long periods of time then you’ll probably still want to upgrade the cooling solution.

Given how quickly the temperature spikes under full load, I think some of the limitation might actually be with the heat spreader as it’s a painted surface. There may also be issues with the way the heat spreader is interfaced to the CPU.

Testing NAS Transfer Speeds

Now let’s get some drives installed into the ZimaCube Pro and do some transfer speed tests on it.

I’m going to install four 2.5” Crucial BX500 SSDs in the main bays and four Crucial P3 Plus NVMe drives in the M.2 bay.

These aren’t ideal for a NAS but they’re what I have available for testing. If you’re going to be using drives in a NAS long term then make sure that you use NAS grade drives and preferably ones with DRAM cache.

Our drives now show up in our dashboard and we can set them up as individual drives or in a RAID configuration.

I’m going to go with RAID 5 and I’ll set up the NVMe drives in one pool and the SATA drives in a second pool.

I had to reformat the SATA drives as I used them for my Pi NAS and they were already in a RAID configuration that the ZimaCube Pro didn’t like.

NVMe Storage Volume Test

Using AJA System Test, and starting with a small 256MB file on the NVMe storage volume. We get writes of around 700MB/s and reads around 900MB/s. So writes are a little under saturating the 10Gb Ethernet connection but reads are very close. I haven’t done any optimisation or tweaked any settings on the NAS so this is straight out of the box with very little setup. With a 1GB test file we get similar results.

Going up to a large 64Gb test file, we get a similar write speeds but our read speed drop off quite a bit, down to 750MB/s.

I’ll have to do some digging to figure out why, but it seems like it likely has to do with the ZimaCubes Pro’s available RAM. The ZimaCube Pro is probably not able to write to the NVMe drives fast enough to keep up with the network adaptor, so the RAM fills up and then the drive’s write speed becomes the bottleneck.

RAM-Filled-Up-During-NVMe-Storage-Volume-Test

NVME Volume Results Summary:

256MB: 700MB/s Writes, 900MB/s Reads
1GB: 700MB/s Writes, 900MB/s Reads
64GB: 700MB/s Writes, 750MB/s Reads

SATA Storage Volume Test

Switching over to the SATA storage volume.

For the 256MB and 1GB test files we get very similar results to the NVMe drives.

When we go up to the 64GB test file, writes start off well but then drop quite considerably. We get about a third of what we got with the NVMe volume. Again this seems to be related to RAM filling up because the drives can’t keep up with the write speed.

Reading the 64GB test file from the SATA volume we get similar results to the smaller files so there are no issues here.

SATA Volume Results Summary:

256MB: 700MB/s Writes, 900MB/s Reads
1GB: 700MB/s Writes, 900MB/s Reads
64GB: 250MB/s Writes, 750MB/s Reads

Real-world Window’s 11 File Transfer Test

Running some real world file transfer tests in Windows 11, we get good results.

Copying a 60GB video file to the NVMe storage volume, we get a very stable sustained 1.1GB/s.

Copying the same file from the NVMe storage volume, we again get a fairly stable 1.1GB/s. There were two occasions where the transfer speed dipped significantly, but it picked up again fairly quickly.

Thunderbolt 4 Transfer Test

When directly connected to my Mac over Thunderbolt, I tried that same three file size transfer tests.

The 256MB test file averaged around 1200MB/s writes and 1500MB/s reads but results were quite erratic.
The 1GB test achieved very similar results to the 256MB test file.
The 64GB file started off writing quite slowly but ramped up to 1000MB/s write. It then achieved faster reads than the previous file sizes, getting up to 1700MB/s – fairly close to the claimed 2000MB/s.

Other ZimeCube Pro Features

The ZimaCube Pro can also run virtual machines, so you can run multiple operating systems to support different applications and utilities.

Plex running on the ZimaCube Pro handles 4K video playback really well. This obviously depends on how much transcoding is taking place, which is minimal for these sample videos, but they barely register on the CPU.

Some early users have already developed their own software for the RGB lighting in the 7th tray. It’s fully programmable through the onboard ESP32 module and each of the LEDs are individually addressable, which gives you a lot of options.

Power Consumption Tests

In terms of power consumption, the ZimaCube Pro is rated for up to 220W.

I did two tests as the total power draw will likely be quite dependent on the type and number of drives you’ve got running.

The first test was without any storage drives installed. With this setup I got a power draw of 27W when idle and it peaked to 81W when under full CPU load.

With four SSDs and four NVMe drives installed, I got an average idle power draw of 34W. This isn’t much of an increase from the 27W without drives, but SSDs are obviously a lot more power-efficient than physical disk drives.

Power-Consumption-Idle-4-SATA-and-4-NVMe-Drives

With the 3.5” bays all populated with physical 3.5” drives, other users have measured around 50-60W with low CPU utilisation and 70-80W with high CPU utilisation. So still well under the rated consumption, but its going to cost a bit to have this running in your home 24/7. Here in Australia I’d be looking at about $8-10 a month to keep the ZimaCube Pro running with my current configuration.

Final Thoughts On The ZimaCube Pro

Overall I think the ZimaCube Pro is a great way to get started with running your own Personal Server in your home or small office. ZimaOS as it currently stands is a bit limited but they’re constantly adding new features to it and it’s simplicity makes it really easy to get a basic setup running, especially if you’re new to running a NAS or home server.

If you outgrow ZimaOS you can also easily transition to a more powerful NAS operating system like TrueNAS or Unraid.

There are a couple of things that I think they need to work on.

While the new CPU cooler is better than the original, there is still a lot of room for improvement. As I’ve said earlier, this may not even just be the cooler, it’s likely the CPUs heat spreader as well. The drive bay fans are also quite noisy and their curves are set a bit too low.

The removable front panel is great for aesthetics but could also do with some tabs to make it easier to remove. You have to sort of hook your fingernails in under the vents to pull it off. It’s not difficult to do but just feels clumsy.

Let me know what you think of the ZimaCube Pro in the comments section below and let me know if there is anything else you’d like to see me test or run on it.

Personal Cloud Server Using A Pi 5 – Made With The Omtech Polar

Michael Klements

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August 28, 2024

6

Personal Cloud Server Using A Pi 5 – Made With The Omtech Polar

The cost of cloud services might not be that significant for one month, but the recurring costs quickly stack up. In a couple of years you can easily be out of pocket over a thousand dollars. So today we’re going to be building our own personal cloud server to bring these services in-house for a single upfront cost and take back full control of our own data.

To do that we’re going to be using a Raspberry Pi 5 with an active cooler on it and a connected NVMe storage drive. To protect the Pi and drive, we’re also going to design and build a custom enclosure for it and I’ll be doing that using the Omtech Polar laser cutter and engraver.

Omtech sent me this new laser to tryout and share with you, so I thought the best way would be through a project that showcases its cutting and engraving capabilities on a range of materials.

Here’s my video of the build, read on for my written guide;

Components Required To Build Your Own Personal Cloud Server

Raspberry Pi 5 – Buy Here
Pi 5 Active Cooler – Buy Here
Pimoroni NVMe Base – Buy Here
Lexar NVMe Storage Drive – Buy Here
Pi 5 Power Supply – Buy Here
40mm 5V Fan – Buy Here
Clear Acrylic Sheets – Buy Here
Black Acrylic Sheets – Buy Here
Walnut Plywood – Buy Here
M2.5 Button Head Screws – Buy Here
M2.5 Brass Inserts – Buy Here
M3 Button Head Screws – Buy Here

Equipment Used

Omtech Polar Laser Cutter & Engraver – Buy Here
Acrylic Bending Tool – Buy Here
USB C Pencil Screwdriver – Buy Here
TS100 Soldering Iron – Buy Here
Brass Insert Tips – Buy Here

Omtech Polar Unboxing and Setup

To start, let’s get the Omtech Polar unboxed and set up.

The Polar comes in a wooden crate and includes everything you need to get it set up and running. It even includes a rotary axis for engraving cylindrical objects and a materials pack to help you get started with some basic projects.

It is a fully enclosed design that contains the smoke and fumes while cutting and engraving, so it includes a ducted ventilation system to draw the smoke out of the machine and exhaust it outside. The full enclosure is also much safer for the operator than more common open gantry-style lasers.

The Omtech Polar doesn’t require much in terms of setup. It comes pre-assembled, so all you need to do is connect the ventilation system to the back and connect it up to your computer via a usb cable or through your home network via Ethernet or WiFi.

Secure Ventilation System To Back Of Polar

The build quality is also quite good. It’s an all-metal enclosure with a thick glass top and lid. Both axes run on linear rails and all of the cabling and air tubes run in a drag chain.

It also comes with some great features like integrated water cooling for the laser tube, built-in air assist and a 5MP camera to assist with positioning your artwork.

The working bed area is 500mm x 300mm, but it can accommodate larger materials using its pass-through tray.

Now that the Omtech Polar is set up, let’s get the case designed so that we’ve got something to cut and engrave on it.

Designing The Cloud Server Case

I used Fusion360 to draw up this case using the sheet metal designer.

Laser Cutting Files Download

I chose this design feature so that we can open up the main body of the case into a flat pattern to cut out from a single piece of acrylic.

This sheet is then bent to form a rectangular tube and a front and back panel finish it off. I’ve also added a clear panel to one side and I’ll make the small side panel insert and the front panel out of walnut plywood as some accent pieces.

Making The Cloud Server Case

To cut out the components, I’m going to be using Lightburn to control the laser. Omtech include a copy of RDWorks with the Polar on a USB drive as a free option, but I already use Lightburn quite a lot on my other lasers, so I’m going to use it for this project too. It’s great that this is an option on the Polar as some systems like the Glowforge lock you into using their own proprietary cloud-based software with no alternatives.

Raspberry Pi 5 Cutting and Engraving Template

Before running the laser, remember to always use proper certified protective eyewear suitable for your laser type when working with these machines, even fully enclosed ones.

As a quick test to start with, let’s engrave and cut a dummy Raspberry Pi that I’ll use to test fit the case’s bends.

The Omtech Polar has a somewhat automated focusing system. You focus the laser using the distance parameter in Lightburn which tells the laser how high to position the head above the material. When set to 17mm, the laser focuses on the surface of the work bed. You then subtract the material thickness from this to get the focus height. I’m using 3mm plywood for the test piece, so the focus height needs to be set to 14mm.

The quality of the cuts and engraves is pretty good, although it doesn’t seem like there is a way to turn the air assist off through software or hardware. This means that the engraving smoke is blown down onto the surface of the wood, which leaves the smoke marks you can see around the engravings.

I’ll use masking tape on the engraved wooden side panel to stop this when we engrave the Pi logo.

The main enclosure flat pattern and back panel are cut from 2mm black acrylic.

Then let’s cut the window from some 2mm clear acrylic.

Lastly, we can cut the front and accent panel from a piece of walnut plywood. It’ll engrave the Raspberry Pi logo onto the side panel before cutting the panels out. I’ve put masking tape over the area where the Pi logo is going to be engraved so that the engraving smoke doesn’t mark it.

Now we’ve got all of the case components made up.

To bend the acrylic I’m using an acrylic bending tool, I’ve added little notches to the flat pattern as guides for the bend lines.

I know it looks like a hair straightener but you can get these bending tools from Aliexpress for about $15 (or from Amazon for a little more) and they work well for bending small sections of acrylic.

With the four sides bent, it’s starting to look like a Pi case.

I’m not going to pretend that I got this right on my first go, actually far from it. I cut this flat pattern out about 8 times before I got the bends in the right places without breaking one of the thin sides alongside the clear window.

Next, I’m going to give the walnut panels a quick coat of varnish to bring out their colour and seal them before gluing them into place.

Then to finish the case off, we can glue the front section and side panels into place with some superglue. I’ve mounted the dummy Pi into the case while doing the front panel to help with alignment.

I’ve also 3D printed some small 90-degree pieces to help with supporting the front and back panels.

I’ve also glued the feet onto the bottom, using two of the feet circular cutouts to make up each complete foot.

The back panel is held in place with some brass inserts in the 3D-printed parts and M2.5 button head screws to secure it. This panel has to be removable to get the Pi in and out of the case.

I’ve also added a 40mm fan to the back panel to push air into the case and out of the vents at the front. This is held in place with some M3 button head screws and M3 nuts.

And that’s the case complete, now we just need to install our Pi stack and load our software onto it to turn it into our personal cloud server.

Installing The Pi 5 and Software

I’m using a Pi 5 with a Pimoroni NVMe hat underneath it.

I’ve got a 1TB Lexar NVMe drive plugged into the hat. You can use a larger or smaller drive, or even a duo hat for two drives if you’d like additional storage capacity.

The Pi stack is held in place on some M2.5 brass standoffs that screw into the standoffs supplied with the Pimoroni NVMe base and then some M2.5 button head screws through the bottom of the case hold it in place.

For software, I’m going to be using Nextcloud.

Nextcloud is an open-source software package that takes care of all of the backend work. To install it, we just download the prepared OS image for a Pi 5 from their GitHub repository and then flash it onto our NVMe drive.

We then plug in our network cable and add power to the Pi to boot it up.

Setting Up and Using Nextcloud

Leave the Pi to run through its first boot and setup process for about 5 minutes and you can then access it by going to https://nextcloudpi or https://nextcloudpi.local on a browser on a computer on the same network as the Pi.

The first time you go to this address you’ll be redirected to an activation page and you’ll need to copy the displayed temporary passwords to log in to your cloud server.

After clicking the Activate button on the bottom of the page, you’ll be prompted to login and then run through a quick setup wizard.

You’ll then land on your Nextcloud dashboard. This looks quite similar to Dropbox, iCloud or Google Drive and is fairly intuitive. You have a root directory which you can add folders to and you can then add and start sharing your files.

Since it’s on your local network and isn’t limited by your internet upload speed, it’s quite fast too. We can copy a 750MB video file to the cloud in under 10 seconds.

We can set up file or folder sharing with other users, similar to other cloud services. It’s also quick and responsive opening up other media like photos.

There are a few other features like contacts, a calendar, notes and tasks. So Nextcloud does quite a lot more than just file storage. You can configure how these work and allow them to be shown on your Nextcloud dashboard.

Final Thoughts On The Build and Omtech Polar

And that’s really all there is to it. You’ve now got your own personal cloud storage server running on your home network.

To access your server outside of your home network, you need to set up port forwarding on your router. I’m not going to go into this in this guide as you can open your network up to security issues if you don’t do it correctly, but it is an option so that you’re not limited to using it only within your home.

I’ve currently got mine set up to share documents and photographs with other users on my home network and I have a couple of digital photo frames that make use of the photo library on my server.

Omtech have recently started selling the Polar in Australia, so you can now get free and fast shipping within Australia too. The Polar looks like a well-built machine and Omtech have built up a good brand name, so I’m confident that I’ll be using this laser as my primary one on projects going forward.

I’ve already done some more testing on different materials to get a feel for the correct settings to use.

Let me know what you think of my Nextcloud Pi build and if you have any questions on the Omtech Polar in the comments section below.

CrowView Note 14″ Workstation – Unboxing and Review

Michael Klements

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August 13, 2024

0

CrowView Note 14″ Workstation – Unboxing and Review

The CrowView Note is a new laptop-style, self-powered portable monitor with a keyboard, trackpad, microphone and speakers built in. It has been designed to be quickly and conveniently connected to a Raspberry Pi, Jetson Nano or other single-board computer or mobile device and can also be used as a terminal for mini PCs or gaming devices.

Let me start off with a quick disclaimer that this is an early prototype that Elecrow sent over for me to try out and share with you. They only launch their crowdfunding campaign later this month, so there may be changes between this and the device that is eventually shipped out.

Here’s my video review of the CrowView Note, read on for the written review;

Where To Buy The CrowView Note

CrowView Note Kickstarter – Buy Here
CrowView Note Product Page – Buy Here
Raspberry Pi 5 – Buy Here
Pineberry HatDrive! Top – Buy Here
Sabrent Rocket 4.0 – Buy Here
Pi 5 Power Supply – Buy Here
Pi 5 Active Cooler – Buy Here

Equipment Used

USB C Screwdriver Set – Buy Here

Unboxing And First Look

The CrowView Note comes in a white branded box. Inside the box is the CrowView Note, a power adaptor and two adaptor boards, one for a Raspberry Pi 5 and one for an NVIDEA Jetson Nano.

The body of the CrowView Note is plastic, although it is finished to look like aluminium. It would have been great to have an all-metal shell but I presume it’s plastic to keep the cost down.

CrowView Note Body Is Plastic, Made To Look Like Aluminium

It weighs a little over 1.1kg (2.5lbs) and has a built-in 5000mAh battery. We’ll see what this looks like in terms of battery life in a bit as this will depend on what it is powering.

First up, the display is a 14” 1080P IPS panel with a refresh rate of 60Hz.

Then we’ve got a keyboard and trackpad. The keyboard feels fairly decent and comfortable to use. The key presses are good. The frame is quite thin so there is a bit of flex if you push down hard on the keys. It doesn’t feel like a high-end keyboard, and it’s similar with the trackpad. You can’t click on the trackpad at any position, the left and right click are only at the front of the pad.

It’s got a range of function keys like most laptop keyboards. These keys control the volume and backlight, turn the trackpad on or off and provide some media controls.

Above the keyboard are some indicator LEDs. We’ve got a status indicator that is on when the CrowView Note is powered on. Then a Capslock and Numlock indicator and a microphone.

On the left side of the CrowView Note, we’ve got a USB port to connect the keyboard, trackpad and other IO. Then there is a mini HDMI port for the display input and a USB-C port to power the connected device at 5V and up to 5A. This was designed to match the Raspberry Pi 5’s power supply requirements.

On the right side, we’ve got another USB-C port. This one is full-feature though. So devices that support USB-C DisplayPort can make use of a single USB cable to this port to charge the device and to connect to the CrowView Note’s display, keyboard, trackpad and other features. Next to that is a headphone jack that redirects the speaker audio. Then we’ve got another USB port. This port can be used to add peripherals to the connected device.

Lastly, we’ve got a 3.5mm barrel jack. This is for power, provided by the included 12V, 4A adaptor. It would have been nice to have power supplied through a USB-C port but I’m glad they’ve gone with this rather than a dangerous non-power delivery 12V USB-C power supply that I’ve seen on some other devices.

This little hole next to the power port is an indicator LED that lights up red when the internal battery is charging.

The speakers are underneath the CrowView Note. Their product sticker covers what seems to be an NVMe drive access slot. So, I assume this is a laptop frame from an actual laptop that has been repurposed for this product, again likely to keep costs down.

We’ll open the bottom up later to take a look inside.

So that’s an overview of the hardware, now let’s get a Pi connected to it to try it out.

Connecting A Raspberry Pi 5 To The CrowView Note

Flexibility is what Elecrow had in mind when designing the CrowView Note, so instead of providing a proprietary port through which a carrier board can be connected, they have designed the interfaces through standard ports. This means that you can either use their carrier boards to connect specific devices and remove the need for cables, or you can connect devices without a carrier board by using standard cables.

Standard Ports To Connect SBC To CrowView Note

To connect our Pi to the CrowView Note we’re going to use one of the two included carrier boards. We have one for a Pi 5 and one for a Jetson Nano developer kit.

The Pi version connects to the USB-C and HDMI ports on the side of the Pi and then uses a jumper across to one of the USB 3 ports on the front.

Plugging Adaptor Board Into Raspberry Pi

The carrier board then plugs into the three ports on the side of the CrowView Note.

Pi Adaptor Board Plugged Into CrowView Note

They’ve added acrylic to the bottom of the adaptor board to support the Pi, so it’s not just hanging on the ports. It’s supported by the desk underneath it, even if you press down on it.

Pi Supported By Acrylic Underneath Adaptor

I’ve charged the battery overnight so I’m not going to add the power cable at this stage. Let’s see how it goes being powered solely by the internal battery.

Pressing the power button provides power to the Pi 5 to boot up.

Once booted up we’re on the desktop. The display looks really good. The image quality is great, the colours look accurate and the viewing angle is relatively wide for a laptop-style display.

As I mentioned earlier, we’ve got a number of function keys across the top row. I quite like the battery indicator. Pressing this key pops up with an indicator on the bottom right of the display that shows how full the battery is.

There is also a full menu with display settings like a traditional monitor.

The trackpad is quite good, you’ll need to turn up the pointer speed, but there is no input lag. You can do the usual tap-to-click but can only really physically left or right-click the mouse in the front third.

The stereo speakers are ok, they sound a little tinny at higher audio volumes, but it’s nice to have them included as an option. My video at the beginning of the post has a sample of the audio when watching a video.

The CrowViews power button is not connected to the Pis power button. So you need to shut down the Pi safely by either pressing its power button or doing it through software. You’ll then need to then press the CrowViews power button to remove power to the Pi once shutdown.

We can also easily connect a Jetson Nano by using the second included carrier board. This is a bit quicker than with the Pi since all of the Jetson Nano’s ports are on one side already and we just have a jumper for power.

Adaptor Board Plugged Into NVIDEA Jetson Nano

My nanos carrier board is unfortunately a 9-19V board so I’m going to have to use external power as the CrowView Note only does 5V.

Connecting Other Devices To The CrowView Note

It may seem a bit strange to have the Pi, Jetson or other computer outside of the laptop-style shell. Elecrow have made a Laptop-style computer for a Raspberry Pi previously which integrated it into the enclosure. This results in a very thick laptop base which reduces portability and access to the Pi, so I prefer this arrangement. This design also allows you much more versatility to use different single-board computers, mini-computers and mobile phones, all with minimal effort.

The adaptor board for the Pi 5 will also work on the Pi 4 if you want to connect one of those.

Or, as I mentioned earlier, you can also connect any single-board computer up using standard cables instead of the adaptor board.

If you’ve got devices like a mobile phone or tablet that supports a USB-C attached display, then a single cable provides another display and connects the peripherals.

Single USB C Cable Connect iPad To CrowView Note

Battery Life On The CrowView Note

In terms of battery life. I got about 2.5 hours when running the Pi 5 with an NVMe drive and a moderate load. You’d probably get close to 3.5 hours on a light load or idle on the desktop. The CrowView Note won’t safely shut down the Pi when the battery is empty, so you’ll need to keep an eye on it.

Raspberry Pi and Jetson Nano Connected To CrowView Note

They made the USB-C power port specifically to match the requirements of the Pi 5 but it would have been nice to have power delivery available for a variety of voltages. This would provide support for more power-hungry devices and fast charging charging, so you could use the built-in battery as a sort of power bank.

Inside the CrowView we can see the battery, which is a 7.4V battery, so that gives us 37Wh. It would have been great if they increased the capacity of the built-in battery to take advantage of all of the space in the enclosure.

Final Thoughts On The CrowView Note

I think the CrowView note is perfect for someone who does a lot of travelling or works on a range of single-board computers fairly often as I do. It’s obviously not for everyone and isn’t going to suit someone who wants to use it as a traditional laptop-style computer. If you’re not making use of the ability to swap out the connected device often then this probably isn’t for you.

I’ve used this setup with a portable monitor and wireless mouse and keyboard quite a lot in the past and I think the CrowView Note would fit right in as an all-in-one replacement for it.

Display and Keyboard Setup That I Usually Use

It would also be great to see a wider range of adaptor boards be made available for different SBCs. I would be interested in one for Pi Zero 2 W.

A big part of whether this is going to do well or not is going to hinge on the pricing. It’s going to be competing against someone buying similar spec. hardware individually, so its price needs to be competitive with that. I’d say somewhere around $150 would be good value for money, but we’ll have to wait and see what they launch at.

This product is still in the Crowdfunding stage, which obviously comes with some inherent risks. Use your own discretion when supporting these types of projects. Elecrow have been around for several years and have successfully crowdfunded 5 other products, so they’ve been reliable so far.

Let me know what you think of the CrowView Note in the comments section below. What can you see yourself using it for?

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