Inexpensive Linux Home Server

Summary

Usually Raspberry Pi is THE holy savior of a low-budget home server but what if… It isn’t? Or should I say… it’s not the only one.

What about hardware that usually sits under the TV desk? TV Box? That’s right! Unfortunately, that’s not the one from the television service provider, I am referring to Android TV Boxes usually from unknown and unheard brands.

But why…?

Because their cheap, you can get one with decent hardware (4 CPU cores, 4Gb memory, 32Gb storage, gigabit ethernet, and WiFi/Bluetooth, USB 3.0, sd card support, …) for about 30 euros, that’s right! And after all, why not?

But… Can they act as a server?

Yes, they can! Some of them support Linux and even Docker which is great for running multiple services at home such as Node-Red, Home Assistant, … But wait, there’s more, you can even build a cluster of them! Redundancy and high availability for the win! (For those who care)

This sounds great but what are the cons?

Well… You won’t get much more expandability as you do with the Raspberry Pi GPIO conectors, meaning that every LTE modem, Humidity sensor… Won’t be compatible with this kind of hardware, you can’t unless they are USB compatible. Support is not as good as with a Raspberry Pi, and the installation of the operating system can be tricky as well.

There’s even a dedicated group of people working on creating Linux support for these kinds of boards but don’t expect a long term support!

Material list

• The prices are varying from time to time, the ones I listed were the prices I paid at the time of purchase, some of them with VAT included others without.
• I already have multiple Small Heat Sinks at home, the ones I listed was the closest I found to the ones I have.

Let’s get started!

The chosen hardware was an “X96 Max+ 8K” with 4 GB RAM, Amlogic S905x3 (Quad Core), and 32 GB internal memory.

Storage

I wanted to make this cluster as small as possible in size and reliability. I also needed to have more storage space and I didn’t want to wear out the internal eMMC (which is probably not the case at all), I wanted to have plenty of space with an SSD like speed experience so I decided to purchase a “Corsair GTX Voyager USB 3.1 with 128 GB” for storing the workloads and “Samsung 64 GB SDCard” for running the operating system.

This was way too much for the job but… Marketing did its job either on these USBs and SD Card with amazing read/write/sequential performance benchmarks and endurance. To be clear, this external USB storage is not needed at all I just wanted to have extra reliable space to store my workloads.

Rack Case

Since I am modifying and going to use this as a cluster I needed to have a proper cluster racking case. There’s nothing in the market assembled for this hardware, I tried to look for something that had enough space to put them, and for any additional modification to the racking case, I should be able to do it with domestic tools. I found this online “GeeekPi Raspberry Pi Cluster”. It states that it works with several different Raspberry Pi models and even Jetson nano, I decided to give it a shot!

Thermals

What about Thermals? There were several reasons I wanted to improve thermals:

• I was going to assemble them in a rack case.
• The stock thermal heat spreader was not enough.
• The rack case comes with a fan, I needed to allow it to do its job.

So that’s what I did, disassembled the TV Box from the stock cases and added thermal pads in the chips that were generating heat with mini heat spreaders on top. The stock fan that came with the rack case did not have a proper connector to supply its power, I replaced it with one of the same size and USB powered (It even comes with a speed controller).

Power Supply

Each TV Box comes with a 5V 2A power supply, meaning that I require to have at least three available power sockets to power them, since 5V is the standard for USB power delivery I searched if it was possible to replace the power supply with USB cables and I found a match! CableDeconn creates USB cables with the adequate conector (5.5mm / 2.1mm jack). This is great! It means that I can provide power using USB which is more portable, less bulkier and safer!
Now I needed to have a USB Hub capable of delivering enough amperage to the required equipments and enough ports, I found one capable of delivering 60W 12A, which is good enough for adding extra equipments with more demanding power requirements. The Rack case had extra room to put it so it was great!

Networking

Since I already have everything USB powered and even a Rack case I wanted to have also a Networking Switch embedded inside. However finding a networking Switch small enough, with at least 4 networking ports, Gigabit and USB powered was unimaginable, at least that’s what I tought, after a bit of online searching I found one! This one is from Cable Matters. It fullfiled every requirement and I can see it being used on different applications, very nice piece of equipment.
I place it next to the USB power supply and connected the RJ45 Cables, it worked like a charm!

Conclusion

Now with everything assembled the result is a very cool 3-node cluster with power and networking built into the case for better portability and organization.