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Ask HN: Simulating USB Mass Storage Over WiFi
Hey everyone!
I have some old digital picture frames which have USB A port, as well as a non-smart TV which plays MP4 files over a USB port, some other miscellaneous devices, so I have been wondering whether it would be possible to add wifi functionality to them.
What I'm thinking is having a micro controller with WiFi, something like ESP8266, which would emulate a mass storage USB device, and would connect to a dedicated hotspot. The hotspot would have a server and running on Node.js and would execute the read requests that the devices send via USB to the MCU which would send it over HTTP over WiFi, and return the response which the MCU would deserialize and return the response as if it has been read by the chip from flash memory.
How difficult do you think this is, I have never coded in C or any low level language, but I have to learn it for school anyway, so why not a project?
I have moderate soldering skills, meaning I can solder some SMD chips, success varies, never touched a BGA ever.
If such a device already exists please let me know.
Thank you!
- detaro 10y agoTwo ideas: Some WiFi SD cards (normally used by photographers to transfer photos while they are shooting, e.g. to get "live" updates during an event out to social media) have a hackable Linux on them, which you probably could modify to fetch images from the outside. The target device would have to understand an SD card in a USB reader as a storage device, but many should. RaspberryPi Zero can do some USB client functionality, you could check out what's already been done there.
- milankragujevic 10y agoYes the WiFi cards are a great idea, I will have to look into that. I assume you could emulate a SD card over WiFi.
- 0942v8653 10y agoI don't think the RPI 0 would work; last time I tried this, it wasn't able to work as both a USB client and host, and the only way to get it to do wifi is with a USB wifi adapter.
- detaro 10y agoI've seen people run network over SPI as well, but good point, that complicates things.
- haspoken 10y agoThe Raspberry Pi 0 can emulate a device as was suggested, but also there are add on boards that can provide wireless connectivity through the bus instead of USB. Both Adafruit and Hackaday have quite a bit of information. Examples: http://hackaday.com/2016/10/24/raspberry-pi-zero-as-a-usb-stick/ http://hackaday.com/2016/10/24/raspberry-pi-zero-as-a-usb-st... https://redbear.cc/product/rpi/iot-phat.html https://redbear.cc/product/rpi/iot-phat.html http://hackaday.com/?s=usb+picture+frame http://hackaday.com/?s=usb+picture+frame https://hackaday.io/project/8678-rpi-wifi https://hackaday.io/project/8678-rpi-wifi