Last Saturday at Nextcloud conference in Berlin the Nextcloud Box was announced. Frank said it’s a part of his promise/desire to make the world a better place by bringing your data home.
How can the world be a better place with Nextcloud Box?
What is Nextcloud Box?
Nextcloud Box is a project between Western Digital Labs, Ubuntu/Canonical and Nextcloud GmbH. It gives you the possibility to store your data (files, documents, photos, calendars, notes, newsfeed, contacts, music files, video files and everything the can be stored in a file) in your own Nextcloud Box. There is no need anymore to upload your data to proprietary cloud services like Dropbox, Google Cloud, Microsoft Cloud, Apple Cloud, Amazon Cloud, and many other! It will be even possible in the next release to make encrypted phone calls via your Nextcloud Box.
The complete Nextcloud Box contains a hard disk, an operating system, and open source software:
- a hard disk from Western Digital (1TB = a lot for me)
- a Raspberry Pi computer (at the moment model 2).
The Raspberry Pi is so far not included in the box you can buy. - a 4GB storage card with a preinstalled Linux System (Snappy Ubuntu Core)
- the Nextcloud software (Version 9.53)
- a software environment that connects the box automatically to your (local) network via ethernet cable and offers the Nextcloud services to all users.
A complete Nextcloud Box looks like this and costs 70 Euro in Europe (buy here).
Why is it sold without the Raspberry Pi?
Nextcloud box should be as open as possible so the partners decided for the start not to deliver the Raspberry Pi. If you already own one you can connect your Raspberry Pi 2 to the box. There is a screw driver, four screws, all necessary connection cables and a power supply in the box. If not, you have to buy it somewhere. Frank announced that there are working on a possibility to sell complete packages in the future.
Putting everything together is easy and doable for everyone. If you search for the card slot at the Raspberry Pi – It’s a bit hidden “below” it and luckily it’s not possible to insert the card in the wrong way.
This it how it looks if everything is connected
The last task is to close the box with the cover and your done.
How to install Nextcloud Box
Well, just connect it to your network, provide electricity and wait 8-10 minutes. Open your browser and point to http://ubuntu-standard.local. The start screen asks to set a user name and a password for the administrator account. Enter na nice name and secure password and click the Finish setup button.
That’s it! Nextcloud Box is ready to use and lots like this:
First try #nextcloudbox works like a charm – congrats @nextclouders @westerndigital @silbs @jancborchar… https://t.co/s8udfuF7DK
— Hagen Graf (@hagengraf) September 19, 2016
Next steps
Depending on your goal and situation you can e.g.
connect Nextcloud Box to your clients
This is an example of the OS X Nextcloud client
It works of course too on iOS and Android devices.
Allow access from outside your home and become a cloud hoster
If you have a fairly fast internet connection at home and a possibility to configure your router, you can enable the access to your Nextcloud Box from outside of your home. E.g. here in France it’s possible to get your own IP-address for free (free.fr). As this IP-address is static it’s possible to connect it to a domain name (mydomainname.tld) and you suddenly become a cloud hosting entity.
IMPORTANT NOTICE AND UPDATE 2016-09-22
My Nextcloud Box was one of the first fifty devices. I’m in an environment which is not the one which will be in the box in the future. The root password of MY nextcloud box is
user: ubuntu
password ubuntu
then sudo (password again ubuntu)
So please change the password before you allow access from outside
Why is Nextcloud Box important?
It’s another try to help people to understand how easy it is to store your own data at home or in your own company in an environment as open as possible. Even the plan of the box is available for free, so that you are able to start your own project!
Remember …
There is no cloud, just other people’s computer!
The familiar you become with your own data, the better it will be for the world too!
At Nextcloud conference 50 Nextcloud boxes were available.
The first Nextcloud box being sold at #nextcloudconf, 8 more followed soon after. pic.twitter.com/PM4Mffaibs
— Robin Appelman (@icewind1991) September 16, 2016
7 #nextcloud boxes are going to Berlin schools, sponsored by @GuidoStepken pic.twitter.com/hTLmF6E0sd
— Hagen Graf (@hagengraf) September 16, 2016
Links
tl;dr: Nextcloud Box will make the world a better place and will bring your data home!
Awesome things. What’s the speed of data transfer from computer to nextcloud device?
Also can it work with any other Hard disk brand, let’s say Seagate, Samsung & Toshiba?
Hi David, I don’t know the speed. You can use whatever you want. The Western Digital PiDrive is just useful because it is designed to work together with a Raspberry Pi and the box is designed around. Two of these hard disks fit in the box
any chance the sdcard image will be available to download (with nextcloud on ubuntu snappy) as a image for writing to my sdcard which I can insert into my Pi2 (without the wd drive)?
I don’t know which image they actually use in Nextcloud Box but there is a Nextcloud Snap available that seems to be the right one (https://github.com/nextcloud/nextcloud-snap).
also the file with the 3d shape of the box would be nice , so everyone can print the box with their 3d printer
Hi Andrea, as far as I understood – yes. Jan Borchard designed the box (https://twitter.com/jancborchardt). Just ask him.
Hi Andrea, did you find the 3d shape of the box?
Cheers,
Eike
Oh wow
Last weekend I’ve been bussy to setup nextcloud in a Pi2B and keeping a step by step tutorial. Including a 1TB (western digital) harddrive.
Also using lets encrypt with Nginx instead of Apache and php7.
The tutorial is not done as I want to make sure my step’s are repeatable.
It should be done by this weekend.
Hi Jan,
great stuff! Please provide a link to your tutorial, when it’s ready.
Hi Jan,
you’re looking for something like this:
https://www.c-rieger.de/
Worked like a charm on my Odroid XU3.
Now I’m conflicted. I’m not the first to tutorialize this, but on the other hand he has a few tricks I didn’t think off.
Wow – awesome installation guide!
Hi, I’m really interested in this one but I’ve got some questions… You mention that you need to have quite a fast internet connection. I only have adsl 8 winch get me around 6 download speed and 1 upload. Will that work? I dot have any time issue personal in case it doesn’t ruin the syncing due to disconnection.
Will it otherwise be possible to sync only when your on the LAN?
I have an Old NAS where I backup all my data, is it possible to scedule an rsync from the Ubuntu core to my NAS daily.
Now I connected my NAS to my desktop by mounting it the fstab.
Thanks for your reply…
Hallo
Du schreibst oben, dass so die komplette Box aussieht und 70 EUR kostet. Die komplette Box beinhaltet aber doch den Pi und ist auch so auf dem Bild zu sehen. Für 70 bekommt man dann aber doch nur das Gehäuse mit HDD – also nicht komplett. Hast du da den falschen Preis angegeben oder meintest du doch nicht die komplette Box?
Der Pi3 wird noch nicht unterstützt?
Danke und Gruß
Bo
Hallo Bo,
auf der nextcloud Konferenz in Berlin gab es das ganze Paket (inclusive Pi) für 70 Euro. Wenn du es normal im Shop bestellst, kostet es 70 Euro ohne den Pi. Der Pi 3 wird noch nicht unterstützt, soll wohl aber bald gehen.
Viele Grüsse
Hagen
Hi, Du schreibst, man müsse die Box nur in das Netzwerk einbinden. Aber wie? Ich nutze Debian auf dem PC und habe eine Fritzbox 7272. Daran hängt bereits ein 2er Pi, den ich als Webradio und Mediaplayer nutze. Auf diesen Pi greife ich über meinen Debian-PC mit Putty zu. Wenn ich Raspbians Desktopoberfläche sehen möchte, nutze ich den X2Go Client (so ähnlich wie Teamviewer), Damit hole ich mir den Desktop des Pi über den Router auf den an meinem PC angeschlossenen Monitor. Wie also binde ich die Netcloud Box in mein Netzwerk ein, damit ich auf die Box per Browser zugreifen kann?
Der RasPi hat einen Ethernet Anschluss, also einfach Kabel einstecken. Der holt sich eine IP-Adresse aus deinem Netzwerk.
Im Browser musst du http://ubuntu-standard.local aufrufen oder die IP-Adresse.
Ok, vielen Dank!
Hallo Hagen,
vielen Dank für diesen echt coolen Post! ;-)
Was mich aktuell noch interessieren würde ist, wie die Rückseite der Nextcloud Box aussieht, wenn der Deckel drauf ist. Kannst du hiervon vielleicht noch ein Foto anfügen?
Dank und Gruß
a-st
Mach’ ich heute Abend
Ich schaffe es heute nicht mehr, fotografiere es, sobald ich in der Nähe der Box bin :)
Hier ist ein Foto von unten :)
https://www.flickr.com/photos/hagengraf/30150985695
Sorry für das späte Feedback, aber vielen Dank für das Foto! ;-)
Bin immer noch am überlegen mit die Box zu kaufen…70€ sind schon irgendwie happig für eine 1TB HDD + Gehäuse :(
Nextcloud 10.0.1 läuft auch mit aktuellem jessie light auf RPi3 – man MUSS also nicht unbedingt die schnappende Buntekuh als OS installieren. :-)
Sorry vergessen zu erwähnen: Auf der µSD /dev/mmcblk0p1 nur die Bootsequenz vorhalten, den Rest von jessie (/dev/mmcblk0p2) auf die Platte (/dev/sda2) verlagern! /dev/sda2 deswegen, da man ja nicht so ganz genau weiss, ob der RPi3 nicht doch noch von /dev/sda1 booten wird (nur wenn sie auch als Boot formatiert wurde) und somit die SD komplett rausfliegen kann ;-) Erst danach den Stack installieren und … läuft …!
I think to have a Nextcloud desktop client will be good addition. Has somebody complied and tested it for raspberry from the official source?
Any suggestions on where to go or what to do when things don’t work? Nextcloud closes the connection immediately on logging in via my browser. I can SSH into the box, but that’s all. This (closing the connection) has happened every time I’ve tried to access via browser, from initial setup onward, not just intermittently.
So, no one else anywhere is having this problem? Even after restarting from scratch in accordance with the wiki (https://github.com/nextcloud/nextcloud-snap/wiki/How-to-restart-from-scratch) I have the same problem.
BTW, the wiki is one of those documents apparently written by someone who knows exactly what they are doing but which isn’t that helpful to anyone who doesn’t already know exactly what to do. My 2 pfennigs.