Plug - "The Brain Of Your Devices" - Kickstarter Project $79

Allyall

I was just reading about plug on Kickstarter, and it seems very impressive.
They have fought off comparisons of Ownlcloud and Synology.

So impressive, that in four days they had secured over $230,000 in pledges.
Just wondering what everyone else makes of it.
I like the idea that it can take seconds to transfer the files.
I don't get what makes it so much different the pogoplug, or a modded pogoplug.

Kickstarter Page
Plug Website

$79 is the expected price when it is launched, which is currently €60.45.

I love the idea of having your own cloud, always have.
I also like that you can share files in "your personal cloud" with other people, the same way you can with dropbox.
But adding your own hard drives to it means that you could have, for example, 5TB of storage and it would only have cost maybe €200.
I have no idea how much that would cost per year on dropbox.
Dropbox prices Starts at $99 per user/year with 100GB Storage per account

The Plug.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yt8_gUq4TA

PLUG SPEC SHEET

• OpenWRT based Embedded Linux
• x86 compatible processor
• Port for your hard drive - USB 2.0
• Port for Internet – Ethernet port 10/100 Mbps
• Average transfer speed: 30 Mbps
• Supported file systems: NTFS, HFS+, Ext3/Ext4, FAT32
• Number of drives supported (using an external USB hub): 8
• LED Display: Power/ Action
• Weight – 200gOperation Environment – -17 to 35 °C
• Storage Environment – -17 to 49 °C
• US or EU power adapter 110V/220V (included)
• Ethernet cable (included)

EDIT: - I also forgot to mention that idoesn't have to comply with U.S. law, which allows the U.S. Government a backdoor into your files on dropbox, iDrive, Google Cloud etc...

pm1977x

Very interesting, USB 2.0 seems a bit old-hat though, where's the future-proofing?

Allyall

pm1977x wrote: »

Very interesting, USB 2.0 seems a bit old-hat though, where's the future-proofing?

There are a few mistakes in the device specs, or, most likely, unchanged updates.
For example, it says the device size says
Dimensions: 270mm (W) x 110mm (D) x 20mm (H)

Which is probably one of the first alpha devices.
It's not due out for another 6 months, so i'd imagine it will be updated a fair bit by then, Also USB 3.0 is probably already standard on it.

The only downside to kickstarter, is waiting for the finished project..
Some brilliant ideas though.

pm1977x

Allyall wrote: »

There are a few mistakes in the device specs, or, most likely, unchanged updates.
For example, it says the device size says
Dimensions: 270mm (W) x 110mm (D) x 20mm (H)

Which is probably one of the first alpha devices.
It's not due out for another 6 months, so i'd imagine it will be updated a fair bit by then, Also USB 3.0 is probably already standard on it.

The only downside to kickstarter, is waiting for the finished project..
Some brilliant ideas though.

Having read through some of the comments it seems there's lots of people calling for USB 3.0 but they're sticking with 2.0

Allyall

pm1977x wrote: »

Having read through some of the comments it seems there's lots of people calling for USB 3.0 but they're sticking with 2.0

Really? That's disappointing. Wonder what the reason is.

Seems they don't think it'll make a difference to the performance of the device.
Also it would raise the cost by quite a bit.

USB3 & Gigabit Ethernet: that would be awesome, indeed, but it would have made the device far more expensive for us to produce (and we don't like that - we want it cheap and sexy). Moreover, with Plug, the memory of your devices is used as cache. So this is not really a bottleneck: in most situations, having USB2 instead of USB3 shouldn't really impact the user experience.

Dades

I'm confused... where are the actually files stored that you can access them anywhere?

From what I can see it's just a hub that can connect your own existing hard drives to (Apple) devices that couldn't previously see them.

pm1977x

You supply the drive, for example, you hook up Plug to your home modem, connect it to a 2TB drive and now your phone, laptop, tablet etc all have access to this 2TBs of storage and can read anything from it, anywhere and will automatically save anything to this drive, via their app.

Allyall

They answered my question too, about pogoplug in their FAQ.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cloud-guys/plug-the-brain-of-your-devices#project_faq_62136

How Plug is different from PogoPlug, Owncloud or Synology?
“PogoPlug, Iomega, or Synology devices are Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices. They add a new folder or virtual hard drive in your computer, and make it accessible from all your devices. Owncloud works the same.
This hard drive or folder is yet-another-memory, a separate place where you have to copy, move, your files into. So at the end of the day, if you use these solutions you still have to constantly manage and figure out where is your data.
The main innovation in Plug is that it manages all of your data for you. Not only the contents of a specific folder.
The Plug app replaces the entire file system of your computers. It handles everything: from the pictures in your “My Pictures” folder, to the files on your Desktop. So it really does feel like all your devices have the same memory: you can download something on your Mac, and open it on your PC.
Everything is in Plug, and the Plug app makes synchronization invisible to you.

Dades

Ah, I see, thanks.

Kinda like a NAS device accessible from anywhere. I have a 1TB NAS drive that does the same over my home wifi - this just takes it one step further and allows the drive to be accessible from anywhere. [And I guess your drive can be just a standard unconnected drive].

Allyall

Dades wrote: »

Ah, I see, thanks.

Kinda like a NAS device accessible from anywhere. I have a 1TB NAS drive that does the same over my home wifi - this just takes it one step further and allows the drive to be accessible from anywhere. [And I guess your drive can be just a standard unconnected drive].

That's the way i see it. Pretty cool idea. I wonder will there be an OS like Jolicloud or anything. Although that would probably be pointless..

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/12/anti-prism-kickstarter-cloud-guys-corporation_n_3586427.html
http://online.wsj.com/article/PR-CO-20130711-910486.html
http://www.besttechie.com/2013/07/12/plug-surpasses-kickstarter-goal-in-12-hours/

Seems to be getting a few headlines.

rev2.0

Good idea - but it's forgetting one of the reasons a lot of people have looked to the cloud for data storage - hard drive failure & data loss!

Be interesting to see if it takes off.

gctest50

Same-ish ?

http://www.tonidoplug.com/