Prototyping🔗

Is this even feasible? There's one way to find out! Well.. there's probably more than one way, but here's what I did. First thing I tried was to model and print rough miniature models of all the components I need to fit inside the case. (which I've printed as well) This gave me general idea, how to put the components in, but it's not accurate enough to see if we have enough free space around the components to actually fit in mounting brackets and all that other stuff. As we'll see later on, in reality there's just few millimeters gap between the components, so anything in the 1:10 scale just isn't going to be accurate enough.

The idea🔗

The idea is simple really: Build a NAS out of readily available PC components inside Knagglig crate sold by IKEA. As for "why?" - it's the usual answer - to see if it can be done in a practical way. The other part of that motivation was, that I can now print parts of the construction, so it was a good training for my design and construction skills, that are, honestly, quite lacking.

Why?🔗

I only have 3D printer for about a month and people asked me that question multiple times already.. It's the question every early adopter gets. (is it really that "early"?) Back in the old days of feature phones, people were wondering why I got Symbian phone that was quite a bit more expensive than regular Nokia brick. That was years before iPhones were a thing, so the answer wasn't as obvious to non-techie people out there as it might be today. (and remember, when it was released, even iPhone wasn't all that smart, no app store, no multitasking, no Bluetooth even) Back then the simple (and real) answer was:

"Because it's cool!"

--- Me

And that's really the reason why I got my 3D printer. However I feel like the real answer is different. I no longer feel that the 3D printers are cool for the same reason the pseudo-smart mobile phones with proprietary OS were cool. And to explain that feeling, I have to go few years back.

Last time when we got our little Ansible setup to spin up Docker containers as systemd services, I suggested that we should perhaps have Drone running the syntax checks and playbook runs for us. Let's give it a try now, shall we?

Earlier on I've shown you how I run docker containers on NAS using systemd. This time, I'll show you an easy way to configure systemd with Ansible that will get you running containers in no time. (and in reproducible and automated way)