Use a Raspberry Pi to Build Your Own Battery-Powered Pocket Cloud Server

NAS (Network Attached Storage) devices are useful for two reasons: they give you storage that you can access from all of your networked devices and they provide storage redundancy to protect your data in the event that a drive fails. But most NAS devices are designed to be kept in your home or office, which means you can’t access them when you’re out and about without an internet connection. To provide on-the-go storage, Toby Chui created a Raspberry Pi-based Pocket Cloud Server that is battery powered.

This device is perfect for people who like to work in coffee shops, airplanes, or other places where internet connections aren’t always available. Instead of having to upload and download files from some online storage service, you can simply connect to this device. It creates its own WiFi access point that you can connect to from your laptop, smartphone, tablet, and whatever else you use for work. It’s designed to be as small as possible in order to fit into a pocket, so it doesn’t have redundant hard disks. But microSD cards today are available in capacities as large as 2TB and there is very little risk that they’ll fail.

The key component of this Pocket Cloud Server is a Raspberry Pi Zero W. That doesn’t have the performance of the full-size Raspberry Pi models, but it is very compact and power efficient. The performance is more than enough for transferring files. The device is powered by two 1200mAh LiPo batteries through a basic regulator/charger that is usually used to make 18650 cell power banks. Chui says those batteries should last for about an hour of heavy use (meaning you’re actually transferring files). We’re surprised it doesn’t have a longer battery life, as the Raspberry Pi doesn’t draw very much current. But it still should be enough to power up when you need to transfer your files.

Instead of using any of the existing software out there that can be installed in the standard Raspberry Pi Operating System, Chui developed his own custom operating system called ArozOS. It can run on any Raspberry Pi, as well as most other single-board computers on the market that have ARM processors. ArozOS is completely open source and was made specifically for NAS devices. Instructions are provided on how to install and setup ArozOS on the Pocket Cloud Server. After the software is setup, you’ll be able to connect to the device whenever you like to transfer files to and from the Raspberry Pi’s microSD card no matter where you are.