Recently I was in need of some CCTV for the home, I had a few choices on this, such as buying a complete kit for £300 which comes with 4 camera’s and a base unit to record everything. As I already have a Synology NAS Box which comes with Synology Surveillance Station, a feature to connect an IP camera and record 24/7, I thought why not buy myself a IP Camera? Looking through the list of supported camera’s, on that was listed was FOSCAM. The next stage was to figure out how much to spend and which one to buy.
Posts tagged NAS
Foscam FI8905 IP Camera
Synology releases DiskManager 3.1
The latest upgrade for the Synology range of NAS Boxes has been released after been in Beta for a long time – this is namely version 3.1. Synology® Inc. today announced the official release of DiskStation Manager 3.1 (DSM 3.1) OS. Its successful beta program attracted over 10,000 users in just 40 days. Synology commits to provide periodic free NAS server OS updates that benefits users to continue to enjoy the latest technologies and new functionalities.
DSM 3.1 builds on the award winning DSM 3.0 with additional consumer and business features to exhibit Synology’s enthusiasm to answer users’ requests and demands,
said Rosiel Lee, product manager of Synology Inc.
Mozy drop Unlimited–the world gasps in horror
In the world of online Backup there is many companies who offer the ability to backup all your data to the cloud and you can sleep at night safe in the knowledge that even in the event of loosing all your local storage (fire, theft or whatever), you can always get your files back. Mozy used to cost a simple $4.95 a month and with this you could back up as much data as you seen fit. Other Providers for example let you choose a directory but in fact stripped out Video files, ISO files and so forth – so there complete backup was not so complete after all. Mozy have now dropped the unlimited data plan and we have $5.95 a month for 50GIG Data or $9.99 for 125GIG. People are up in arms – how dare they restrict what we backup and why did they offer unlimited in the first place?
Upgrading the Network to gigabit
While I already have a gigabit network running, there is not enough ports to allow all the computers to connect via gigabit which means some are locked to 100mbit and the rest are on wireless (a mixture of Wireless N and Wireless G speeds). Converting your network to gigabit gives you a boost in speed and the cost is very low these days as you will see. A Quick recap on what I already have – I am on 50mbit / 5mbit Cable Internet via Virgin Media which is connected to a D-Link 615 Router (Supplied by Virgin media as part of the install) which features Wireless N Speed but only 4 ports at 100mbit. I have a 5 Port Netgear gigabit Switch which is a bit dodgy on the 5th port – this means I can only have 4 computers (or NAS Boxes) max that is on Gigabit.
Synology USB Station 2
Synology have a low end product for sharing USB Hard Drives ( as well as printers) which is called USB Station 2. You can buy this product for £79.99 – I am not sure of USA Pricing at this time. This uses the same OS as the rest of the Synology Range (DSM 3.0) so you can use it as a download station, share printers across the network and even plug in a USB Wireless network card and make this thing wireless. You could spend the same money for a Print sharing device and it may look and act like the PogoPlug (except it is not shocking pink) but is in fact a full blown NAS – just with USB Speeds for the drives.
Synology NAS thoughts and uses
Having used these devices now on a daily basis across a handful of machines, used most of the services it has to offer and even added some extra packages, I wanted to write a post about how I felt this was holding up and was it living up to the hype or was it starting to crack under the pressure? This is written with one users in mind (me) across computers running Windows 7, Linux and Mac OS X – the main aim of this was a shared Music, Movie, Backdrops collection, example been if I add some wallpapers, all the computers can use them as required.
Modding the WDTV V1
I bought one of these devices a long time back and what it does out of the box is basically play just about anything your chuck at it and play it at full HD (1080p). It works by means of plugging in your external HD with movies, music and photographs and you plug it into your TV via HDMI. This works well enough but it means your limited to the of the hard drive you plug in. They did bring out a new model called the WDTV Live which has wired / wireless (by means of a adaptor I guess) but I did not fancy buying yet another device – so what about modding this and making it wireless and accessing my NAS box?
Synology DS110+ Review
The Synology DS110+ is a One Bay NAS Box aimed at the small to medium business market. It comes supplied with no hard drive (you fit your own capacity), has an eSATA and 3 x USB ports to add additional storage to the device plus it is fitted with a gigabit Ethernet port for high speed data transfer.
Synology Debuts DSM 3.0 Beta
Synology® Debuts its DiskStation Manager 3.0 Beta, Including Multi-tasking Web UI, New iPhone® and Android Phone Support and Enterprise-level Features. Synology® Inc. today announced the beta release of its operating system, DiskStation Manager 3.0 (DSM 3.0), introducing multi-tasking web UI and new web desktop that make Synology NAS server even more intuitive and easy to use. The enriched iPhone® and Android phone support greatly increases multimedia files’ mobility. In addition, Windows® ACL support simplifies file privilege management. Comprehensive iSCSI support and extended volume size capability offer businesses with scalable NAS solution to meet enterprise-level demand.
The NAS Box by Synology – One Week on
I was hoping to do a full blown review after having my devices for 6 days now (It arrived Tuesday) but due to the capacity and time taken to get the device ready and put the data on there – this cannot be the case. Unlike a new graphics card or a new monitor, a NAS box is generally not something you get excited about, it’s storage after all but it does play a very important role in getting all your information in one place and be able to access it from the LAN.
