Happy Bison

Intro

Espressif announced a new SoC some time in November of 2020. The chip is called ESP32-C3. I happen to get an engineering sample and I'm happy to share my thoughts on this.

My post will be more towards DIY-community due to my own background. TLDR: I'm really excited about the new addition to ESP32 family and the new features it brings.

ESP32-C3 vs others

The ESP32-C3 is suppose to take a place somewhere between ESP32/ESP32-S and our old friend ESP8266.

I won't be surprised if the goal is to replace ESP8266 and to take its place in ...

List of ESP8266-based modules

There are several modules based on ESP8266 WiFi SoC. Each has its own field of use and functionality, although some look similar to others. The list mainly consists of ESP-xx variations of such modules which are widely available from online stores like eBay, Aliexpress, Tao, etc.

ESP-01

I believe this is one of the first versions of ESP8266-based module produced in large quantities. This is probably how it started.

It's simple and has limited number of GPIO pins, but it's still useful to get started. The 2.54mm-pitch 8-pin dual row header makes experimenting easier. Some ...

ESP8266 Dev board around ESP-201 module

I recently came across ESP8266 WiFi chip and various modules based on it. This is a low cost microcontroller with WiFi built into it. There is a huge community around ESP8266. You can develop for it using C, Lua and even Wiring using Arduino development tools.

I decided to get my hands on it to play with it a little. I ordered some boards for a start. First, I needed some kind of easy prototyping dev board for easier testing. I got ESP-201 and Dev board designed specifically for it. After unsuccessful search looking for schematic ...

Introduction

A story about little guy named MMB3R08BUACA-GE

I'm not sure if I need to introduce and explain what is fake flash card assuming that you came here because you got it. But for those who came here accidentally and still want to know, the fake flash card is the same as fake any other item -- it looks like something else, not what it really is. This is usually done to artificially add up some value to it.

For example, you bought 64GB flash card. It shows 64GB, looks like 64GB, smells like 64GB... it must be 64GB? Not always. There ...

Overview

Recently I got a nice offer for an HP MediaSmart Server EX485 so I decided to get one for myself and check out what's inside of this little animal. Additionally, it would be nice to compare with my Acer easyStore H340 and compare one with another.

I will not be going into a deep review about EX485/EX487, but instead I'm going through different hardware tweaks and trick, and compare with similar Acer H340 unit on the power consumption, performance, etc. Ok, enough excuses, let's get to the business..

The EX485 comes in a little tower case and ...

Introduction

My Network storage exploration never ends. So I recently received an Acer Aspire EasyStore H340 unit to play around. It came with Windows Home Server from the factory, but my idea was to find out how easy to install a different OS (my goal was to have FreeNAS on it).

There are many reviews about this little box so I'll just briefly describe what it is and what it can do.

Hardware specifications:

• Series: Aspire Easystore H340
• Model: AH340-UA230N
• CPU: Intel Atom Processor 230 1.6Ghz
• Chipset: Intel 945GC Express Chipset + ICH7R
• Motherboard form-factor: Mini-ITX
• Internal Slot: PCI-express 4x
• Memory ...

Building a home NAS

Introduction

I'm constantly getting asked about how to build a home NAS from my friends and colleagues so I decided to make this small tutorial to help others to better understand how to start and what's required.

After all, when you build your own peice of equipment then you can choose your priorities (performance, price, power consumption, capacity, etc) and invest more into that.

Our goal

My goal is to build the following NAS unit (the highest priority goes first):

• Reliable.
• Good capacity.
• Upgradeability.
• High performance (the same or better compared to existing manufactured solutions).
• Low ...

The Chenbro ES34069 Case Review

Intro

As many of you, I have several computers at home. That's including a desktop and a few notebooks. All of them are different level of hardware and software (Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS X, etc), but all of them need a storage space. I always prefer to have most of the data centralized so I can give a proper attention (backups, maintenance, etc) at one piece of hardware.

About 3 years ago I built a network storage drive (utilizing FreeBSD and software RAID for higher reliability). When looking at today's technology I decided that ...