With lighting: Turn your Raspberry Pi into a NAS for 3.5-inch drives

While there are many ways to put a Raspberry Pi to use as a NAS, a project posted on Hackaday.io caught our eye. Larger and arguably more ambitious than the PiNAS on which we reported a few days ago. The project, posted by Hackaday.io member HarryTheB, is more than a NAS too.

The so-called Flying saucer clock (and NAS!) is, as its name suggests, a clock, a flying saucer case and a NAS. While the build includes two drive bays as the PiNAS does, the Flying saucer clock can house 3.5-inch drives. By contrast, the PiNAS only has space for 2.5-inch drives.

As the photo below shows, the Flying saucer clock can report hours and minutes simultaneously, with HarryTheB including 60 neopixel LEDs for minutes and 12 to denote hours. While the Flying saucer clock looks impressive, a lot of work has gone into creating it.

According to the project page, the design requires 1.8 kg of filament and took 112 hours to print. The case consists of numerous parts that must be screwed together, too. There are also reams of cables, not least because of the unit's 84 LEDs. The two 3.5-inch drives can be connected via a simple USB SATA adapter, though. Meanwhile, the Raspberry Pi controls the LEDs via its GPIO. The Flying saucer clock can display special lighting effects, too.

HarryTheB has uploaded the parts list, 3D print templates, build instructions and program code should you be interested in making a Flying saucer clock yourself. Please see the project page for more information.