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 synology
Foscam FI8905 IP Camera
iPad gets cheaper, new iPad 2 to come soon
Apple today announced a brand new iPad called the iPad 2 funny enough, what they have done is make the device thinner, lighter, more powerful (dual core A5) and fitted a couple of camera’s – none of this was of any surprise to people waiting for this to happen but they made the price the same as the previous generation and in turn – took off a chuck of money from the older version. This puts a bit of a different spin now on the tablet market because we have a 16GIG Basic Model (version 1) for £329 or $399 to the USA Market. On the surface seems not a great deal has changed but to think outside of the box – what other “half decent” tablet can you get for £329 that is as good as the iPad? Already the Xoom has been spotted at costing £500 and others about the same, yes there is cheap tablets but they are pretty bad let me tell you.
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.
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.
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.
Synology DS210J NAS Device
I recently bought the Synology DS210J NAS Box plus a couple of Seagate Barracuda ST32000542AS 2TB 3.5″ SATA II Hard Drive, this was to give me a shared network storage space of 4TB (well under 4TB once formatted) and be able to store all of my data requirements for now and in the future. I agree that 4TB will be used up and as this is only a 2Bay device – no way to expand internally but we shall cross that bridge when we come to it.
