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The brains. The cupboard that controls the van.
Overall view of 'The Tech Cupboard'
In the tech cupboard is everything that I want for the smart system. All the facias/slots are 3D designed and printed by myself, a truely custom setup. There's a 20 amp 12v feed and a 12v to 5v buck for the lower voltage bits. The raspberry Pi5's run on 5v along with ALL the LEDs in my van.
At the top in orange is a CCTV slot. 4 'reversing' cameras mounted on each corner of the van, constantly recording 24/7. Handy if someone hits the van and drives off - just a quick pull of the video and away we go. It's got 500gb storage which is around a week of solid recording - more than enough for safety. The brain of the cctv runs off 12v too so bargain, no dropping the power!
The second slot down in blue is Home Assistant - this controls the whole smart system, records all the stats and allows me to remotely monitor and action things in the van when im not there. Yes, I can turn the diesel heater on and get the hot water heating before I even get to the van! This slot requires 5v so we used the 12v to 5v buck to send it some juice. We decided to go with a fast NVME storage drive for Home Assistant as I have a lot of stats recording and having it load them quick is a nice touch.
INSERT PICTURE OF HOME ASSISTANT SLOT
Network attached storage brain - controller. Powered by a Pi5 with OMV software running.
The third slot in red is part one of my network attached storage. Overkill I hear you ask?! maybe for some but not for me. I have enough space on here that I can save photos, videos and music without having to rely on the cloud and data.. DATA!! When theres no signal I can still access everything. Sort of the same setup as Home Assistant but this is called Open Media Vault. Also running on a raspberry Pi5 but with a 9 port sata nvme slot which is connected to the fourth slot...
... in purple. Here is the bulk of my data storage. 20 terabytes of goodness! This can take eight 2.5 inch laptop drives so solid state drives are perfect - vibrations are NOT good for spinning drives. We need 12v for this to run but thats no issue, we've already got it running up to the cctv!
Do I need network attached storage - in a van?! Maybe not but I wanted it so I built it.
At the very bottom in green is a multi slot. This is just a testing slot at the moment until I figure out what I want it to do. Currently it controls a set of LEDs and has a 120w USBc charger! It (when finished) will also be able to monitor the power usage the 'Tech Cupboard' uses which will be handy to see.
All of this is connected to a TP-Link Archer MR600 4G router for internet and connectivity. I've been considering Starlink but I can't justify the monthly cost!! And I've heard they're power hungry!
For power delivery I decided to whip up a design for power delivery to each slot in 'The Tech Cupboard'. This little board has a daisy chain power input with capacitors to help with power surges and a data line so I can monitor the power throughput in each slot. These will be mounted on each tray in place of the prototype board there at the moment.
INSERT PICTURE OF GREEN SLOT
Power delivery board. Input and the bottom - output at the top.
There's still some stuff to do to the cupboard to get it where I want it to be but at the moment it's doing everything I need it to. I still need to design a door to hold the tablet which is going to be the main input device for Home Assistant. It wont take long but the printing will! Yes, I'm going to 3D design and print something...... Funky!!
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