Brainstorm Toys for 3 years +, My Very Own Cloud

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Experience a beautiful cloud in your own room. Enchanting cloud night light appears to float on the clear stand. Colour-change light show with rain and thunder sounds. However, I also recommend you to do the manual set up - and here are some links and tips on how to configure everything. Note: “Cloud” can have many meanings, here we’re basically talking about an online storage solution - it also doubles as a chat-server (audio/video), streaming server, etc - basically NAS (Network Attached Storage) with bells and whistles; and not “Cloud” in terms of Google Cloud or AWS. It indexes all of your music and allows you to access it via various APIs, such as Subsonic. This is a great feature, because you can now use various Apps on different devices (such as your Android Phone) - to connect to your server, browse the contents, make playlists and stream audio. Here’s a huge list of Subsonic Apps. You don’t have to pay anyone “per seat” - you can create as many seats as you want and remain in control of your business data (all of the files & generated meta). I wish I knew about Nextcloud when we started Drupal Moldova Association - it would make my life way simpler.

However streaming to Chromecast - came with a bit of a challenge. I’ve browsed quite some apps, but didn’t find anything that would work - until I have landed on Dsub for Subsonic - There are several ways to go and things to consider. In a nutshell - the hardware should be able to accommodate a Hard Drive, an Ethernet port, and potentially to have another SATA port to expand the storage (as you will run out of it eventually).

It took me roughly 1-2 days (I had trouble setting up Dynamic DNS, I’ll share my code here so you don’t have to figure it out yourselves). Once that’s taken care of, it’s time to set up some users. A pristine Nextcloud installation has only one user, the administrator. While you can operate your cloud as the administrator, it’s a good idea to employ Nextcloud’s excellent user-management facilities to create a new user. So by setting up the Nextcloud App, indexing your audio files, going to this path: /apps/music/#/settings - and creating an authentication token (or you can use your nextcloud credentials) - you can already listen to your music on-the-go.

Now, if you run this script (make sure you give it: sudo chmod +x update-dns.sh and then you can just: ./update-dns.sh ) with all the things filled-up, except Entry ID - it will print you the JSON reply with all of the Entries in the given Zone ID. Now you can scroll through the reply and find the Entry ID ( key “id”). Once you find it, re-edit your file and paste the Entry ID. Now, you can try and reset your router and simulate the IP change and see what happens - hopefully it all goes well. Streaming Music to your Chromecast - your own Spotify service, no ads includedBrainstorm Toys is a range of fun, educational and interactive STEM toys that brings together a host of fascinating items. STEM toys incorporate science, technology, engineering and maths and encourage children to explore and develop a passion for these subjects. The aim of Brainstorm Toys branded products is to entertain children but also to inspire them to learn more about their environment. Mode 1: relax to the sound of gentle rain with a calming, colour-change LED lights. Perfect for dropping off to sleep. And if you’re planning to actively use their chat feature - they also released a separate Official mobile app for that too - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nextcloud.talk2&hl=en&gl=US Startups & Business

Mode 3: bring the force of nature into your room with thrilling thunder sounds and cool lightning effects. Hear the storm, whilst you stay warm and cosy in bed!

Dynamic DNS

Another thing to consider is electricity - ideally you’d either want a low-consumption ARM-based system (like RaspberryPi, OrangePi, etc), or an old laptop (they consume 20-50 Watts), or some NAS system - but in case of NAS, maybe you’d be better off by using their own OS / software and not Nextcloud. Electric consumption is important as your device will continuously be connected - and this will increase your electric bill, actually that’s the only expense of the setup. Here comes the last bit - add this shell script to your crontab. To do this, you can just type in shell: crontab -e and then make sure you have this line: If you’re running a small business (or mid-sized one ?) or a startup - and you need a place to share events, tasks, chat, collaborate and share files - Nextcloud is an amazing tool for that.