PogoPlug 2.x, after much effort…
Pogoplug 2.x has been pushed to users for about 2+ months by now. Initially, there was a lot of problems with its new feature to make photos and videos be previewable on its web interface. However, if you have a lot of media on your drives, then you might run into problems.
I have a 1 TB Mybook USB2 drive and a Drobo v2 attached to it. The Drobo itself have about 2TB worth of media, as this is a remote backup copy of media assets of my volunteer group. While trying to encode the preview segments, the PogoPlug become so overloaded (after all, it doesn’t have a very powerful processor) that it frequently dropped the drives.
Pogoplug would report that there was no drives attached to the device. Unplugging and replugging helped for a while for it to recognize that something is attached, but it would refused to show its content. After a short while, it would say that there were no drives again.
I ended up deleting the .cedata (which PogoPlug keeps its configuration data as well as the cache for the preview segments of the media it has encoded). After doing so, the PogoPlug essentially thinks that the drive is ‘new’ to it. I quickly disable the preview generation on all the drives. It was then ‘stable’.
However, I noticed that I cannot access some directory properly. I ended up running chkdsk on all the drives to make sure that the NTFS directores were not screw up by all the plugging and unplugging. Chkdsk did find a few problems which it fixed. After that, accessing those directories on the Pogoplug were fine.
I have to say, during these frustrated hours, Pogoplug’s forum has been very helpful. Also, the developers are quite responsive to requests and suggestions.
I do love this device. It is not quite perfect yet, but it serves its purpose very well.
Pogoplug has release version 2 of PogoPlug. You don’t have to buy a new one (although the new one has integrated 4 USB 2.0 port, saves you about $15 to get a standalone USB 2 hub) because your V1 Pogoplug will receive its update in firmware.
What surprised me was that after the firmware was upgraded, I could not see all my drives that’s attached. I have a WD 1TB My Book and a Drobo attached to it. I reset, detached the drives repeatedly but the Pogoplug was unable to see all the drives consistently.
Until I realized that the new firmware was generating previews and transcoding some of the video clips into a format that Pogoplug’s web player can use. While it doesn’t transcode the entire video clips, it does transcode a 10-15 sec segment of it. This process, depending on what you stored on the drives, can cause the system to be really slow.
I ended up stopping the scanning process to generate the previews of all the media on all the drives. PogoPlug then return to normal. The extra load in transcoding resulted in the Pogoplug being bogged down by the trascoding processes that prevent it from recognizing the new devices.
Being able to preview a segment of the video clip is good, but I wish Pogoplug can do it like the “Orb” network, which will simply become a streaming server to send the video clip across.
After the firmware upgrade, all my OpenPogo installed program still works well (I only installed the Samba server anyway). Heard that the new firmware does use more space, resulting in less ‘user’ space for custom installation of software.
Haven’t got too much time to play around yet… will report back later.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone (who celebrates this holiday).
After living with the 2 Plug computers for 2 months now, I have the following conclusion:
1. Consumer: Pogoplug
I have to say I love the Desktop Virtual drive that Pogoplug provides. This device has the average consumer in mind. While it doesn’t offer as many application as TonidoPlug, it simply works. The only con I can think of is that its web interface won’t support playing of video. I am not sure if I am not smart enought to get it to work or it is simply not supported. Photo and Music plays fine directly from web interface.
2. Geeks: TonidoPlug
The applications support is simply awesome. They recently added a package that you can do https connection with the device. Granted it wasn’t a commercial certificate, but nonetheless, it allows you to connect to your device without worrying about evedropping (good for say connecting from corporate network back to home).
The various applications are updated regularly and new ones have been added. I have not actually play with them much. However, the torrent client, by itself, is worth the money I think. Low power torrent machine is a great thing to have!
PogoPlug just came out with its V2 hardware It looks really slick and come with 4 ports USB 2.0 instead of 1 (which you can get a USB 2.0 hub to do the same). Price has increase to $129 though…
TonidoPlug First Impression…
Yes, I know I am crazy but I just bought a TonidoPlug. PogoPlug, TonidoPlug and SheevaPlug are all based on a very similar reference design using ARM processor.
From my current experience with both, the two are about equal.
Application Support Winner: TonidoPlug
I must say, I am really impressed with the various Apps already available on the TonidoPlug. I am especially happy with the TonidoTorrent. Now, I can have a torrent client that runs 24×7 with very low power usage. If I can somehow get an eMule client on it, this is a perfect machine.
Hardware Design: Draw
The two devices are virtually identifcal. I think the Tonido website was a bit misleading in that it showed that the device had a slot for putting in an SD card or something. I tried hard, but I wasn’t able to make anything give to show that slot. TonidoPlug does have 256MB more RAM, which probably gave it a slight advantage in the number of application that it can run simultaneously.
Integration and usage: PogoPlug
While Tonido has superior application support, I cannot say enough good things about the ability to show PogoPlug as a network drive on your computer. It is the single most important feature it has.
In relative terms, PogoPlug’s setup is much easier, it doesn’t require any tweaks to the Router etc, simply because there just isn’t much to configure. On the other hand, you will need to establish a profile on Tonido’s website and open the admin port to allow remote administration. While it is a piece of cake for the hackers among us, it may not be a trivia task for the public.
So take your pick. I think if you want to use it as a simple server, TonidoPlug wins hands down. For simple file sharing, I think PogoPlug is the way to go.
Plug Computing
Apparently, PogoPlug is just one implementation of Plug Computing. There are several others, including SheevaPlug and TonidoPlug. Sheeva is the base implementation upon which different companies package nicer application onto this little server.
Both Tonido and Sheeva are slightly more powerful (contain more RAM) and have SD card expansion. However, PogoPlug has the essential piece of software that makes it a better product for my use: Network Drive Client. A pogoplug can appear as a network drive on your local machine. CloudeEngine has clients in Windows, Mac OSX and Linux.
What I am planning of using the Pogoplug is as follows:
1) Use the Drobo that I have as a remot backup unit.
2) Connect the Drobo to Pogoplug
3) On remote machine, install network drive client and connect to the PogoPlug.
4) Use directory sync program to sync daily changes: SyncToy or FreeFileSync (as suggested by one of the visitors to this site)
Cheap and easy disater recovery site can be setup like this. I will let you know how it goes.
I have also ordered a TonidoPlug to evaluate. These little machines are amazing in that they are really small computers. TonidoPlug runs Ubuntu 9.04 which means that developing or packaging software for it should be quite doable. These plug computers use ARM processors which are very power efficient. I may soon use the TonidoPlug to do my torrent downloads instead of using a laptop.
Are you PogoPlugged?…
Just received the PogoPlug that I ordered. Just Google for it and you will find the website.
Pogoplug is the size of a small power brick, but it is literally a small embedded Linux plateform. There was literally no configuration required. You plug the device into your router and power it up. Hook up a spare USB2 HD and magically, you have Internet enabled storage system.
The device required no configuration at all. It connects to PogoPlug’s website and takes care of NAT traversal automatically. You can access the content via PogoPlug’s website or install a software package to use it as a local HD.
I am testing it out right now but am planning to use this as a way to sync across Internet to provide some off-site backup. I volunteer for a non-profit organization that generates a ton of photos and video. I am planning to us this device to provide off-site backup. It would be very simple to do the initial data backup directly using locally attached HD, then connect this to the PogoPlug. Future syncing could use SyncToy on a local machine in the HQ to the PogoPlugged device. Fairly low cost off-site backup I think…
