[OT] [Startup] Searchable, Secure Home Cloud

[AJ ONeal (Home)]

Hey Everybody,

I'm working on a home / office cloud solution.

I'm applying to BoomStartup and I've made it past elevator pitch to screening.

Now I'm looking for a co-founder with design / html / css skills.

If you know someone who fits the bill, please forward.

And yes, "co-founder" means working for donuts, up to 20% equity, and a small investment from BoomStartup to help us while we continue to seek investment and, more importantly, ship product. If interested, contact me privily. Ask any questions publicly.

The basic problem is that my mom, and my grandma, and many of my friends, we don't like our stuff (or privacy) belonging to (and at the discretion of) someone else. We put stuff in the cloud because it's convenient, not because we feel great about it.

Existing public cloud / home cloud services don't work for me because

* space - I need 1 or 2 terabytes, not 10 or 20 gigabytes (ALL of my pictures, movies, and music, accessible anywhere)

* functionality - even with SpaceMonkey or World Book, there are no apps, no integration.

* searching - Ever tried finding an old post on facebook? Hello, infinite scroll!

* sharing - Ever tried to share a 50mb file with some sitting next to you? #AirDropFail

* security - Lala. Songza. Simplify Media. Ubuntu One. Dozens of others. They shut down and give me x days to backup my crap or I lose it forever. Oh, and then I can't use my playlistst / share folders / moods / presets / etc anymore. All that meta-data style stuff is just gone gone 

* ownership - since XP activation servers are gone, I couldn't help my grandma reinstall it

* extensibility - I'm a programmer. If they'd let me, I'll solve my own problems. I'd even share the solution!

* offline use - if the internet is down, I should still be able to use my home media app to watch my movies

We already have the infrastructure for a solution - almost all middle class American homes have a router that supports UPnP forwarding with an always-on internet connection and even on a "slow" day they can watch Netflix in two bedrooms at the same time.

With the addition of WebRTC, Mozilla's Let's Encrypt, and more and more pocket-sized devices being more powerful than the servers of just a decade ago. Right now, today, we have all the capacity to use the internet in the way it was originally envisioned. The age of the peer web is at our doors.

The cloud platform I'm building is like an iPad meets Wordpress meets a peer CDN - apps that are always-on services and can use each other's APIs in a mesh of trusted peers (the base price will includes 2 boxes so you immediately share with a friend and get 99.99% uptime).

I'm literally working on functionality for my grandma base on a convo we had a few weeks ago. And when I have her box ready, it'll benefit both of us.

She wants to use the photos app to pull in all of her photos from her laptop, backup drive, and sd cards into one place where she can organize and search for them easily, but still be able to share with people on facebook, but also be able to search for previously added photos.

My box will trust her box (oauth2 / android app permissions style) and I'll send an invite to do the reverse so that I can use her box to run a copy of my critical websites and she can use mine for encrypted backups. In the average case the load is round-robin split across both boxes. In the case that one is down, the other will be bearing the full load within seconds. Virtually no downtime.

Currently I've moved every site I run from digital ocean to my home cloud (except a custom Dynamic DNS service that handles the up / down / round-robin jiggery pokery). I take credit cards on it (through stripe). I have a functional OAuth2 framework for apps, people, and devices. I've got UPnP / PMP working. I'm working on some settings / management interface now.

The end game is that this will eventually replace Facebook - and many other services where their only product is our data to their advertisers.

Revenue will come from the app store, curated advertisements, and eventually managing CC processing, SMS, and email (systems that just can't work peer-to-peer). The boxes will sell near-cost for the home tier so that we can ship 2 at a time and expand the network quickly. The business and developer tier will have a little more margin.

AJ ONeal

[Joseph]

I am interested.

Sent from my iPhone

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[AJ ONeal (Home)]

If you're interested in knowing when presales and the kickstarter happen, please put in your email at:

https://daplie.com/walnut

AJ ONeal

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[Ryan Hess]

Hey AJ, I've got a question with this.

I currently have a home network drive I use to store my stuff.  I DON'T have my stuff in the cloud, because, like you said, I need more than 10 or 20 GB of space (the drive is 3 TB).

However, my biggest problem is replication/off-site backup.  If my HDD fails, or if my house burns down, wave bye-bye to all my photos, music, movies, etc.

I love all the other things you propose, but if all my data is in one place, my (personal) primary concern isn't addressed.

Does your system have a solution for that?

[AJ ONeal (Home)]

I currently have a home network drive I use to store my stuff.  I DON'T have my stuff in the cloud, because, like you said, I need more than 10 or 20 GB of space (the drive is 3 TB).

However, my biggest problem is replication/off-site backup.  If my HDD fails, or if my house burns down, wave bye-bye to all my photos, music, movies, etc.

I love all the other things you propose, but if all my data is in one place, my (personal) primary concern isn't addressed.

Does your system have a solution for that?

The devices will be sold in trusted pairs (you can't buy just one). So you'll give one to someone you trust and share encrypted backups with that person (in both directions).

They won't be able to read content that you haven't shared with them, but if the power were to go out at your house you will be able to log into their device and use the content yourself.

In the beginning this will be pretty straight forward replication of file-level encrypted data, but as the network expands and you have many trusted peers it will operate in bitsync fashion - but that there are other features in front of bitsync, so I'd peg that as at least a year out.

AJ ONeal

P.S. Sorry for sending this sent out twice. The first time gmail switched the address it was being sent from and bounced from the list.

[Alexandros Nipirakis]

Forgive my ignorance - but how is this different from:  

http://storj.io/ 

(Blockchain based distributed cloud)  

Or the Drobo Transporter  

http://www.drobo.com/downloads/products/DS-Transporter.pdf 

If I understand what you are saying - it seems that the two units will backup between two trusted systems (similar to Transporter) using encrypted backups, but then later on you seem to suggest that the network you propose would work almost exactly like the transporter.   

For me - I had thought about doing the transporter some time ago (as you said - most cloud doesn't do squat to protect the massive amounts of data most people have) but for whatever reason (probably didn't feel like shelling out 300 bucks) I never went there.  

It does seem similar to your idea though.  

Kind Regards,  

Aleksei 

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[AJ ONeal (Home)]

P.S. I have a problem with storage being tightly coupled with the device. I don't want to have to buy a new device to simply increase capacity year over year.

I noticed the fine print on the Drobo that seems to suggest that it *doesn't* come with a hard drive. Wow.

I don't think the pair I'm selling will cost that much, including two 1tb hard drives (still working out manufacturing details though).

AJ ONeal

[AJ ONeal (Home)]

Forgive my ignorance - but how is this different from:  

http://storj.io/ 

(Blockchain based distributed cloud)  

Or the Drobo Transporter  

http://www.drobo.com/downloads/products/DS-Transporter.pdf 

If I understand what you are saying - it seems that the two units will backup between two trusted systems (similar to Transporter) using encrypted backups, but then later on you seem to suggest that the network you propose would work almost exactly like the transporter.   

For me - I had thought about doing the transporter some time ago (as you said - most cloud doesn't do squat to protect the massive amounts of data most people have) but for whatever reason (probably didn't feel like shelling out 300 bucks) I never went there.  

It does seem similar to your idea though.  

I hadn't heard of either of those before, but I'm glad to see that I'm right where I want to be in the middle of an emerging market.

Imagine that you're looking at an iPad, but accessible in a web browser.

Now imagine that there's an app called Dropshare that is somewhat similar to Dropbox.

Now stop imagining anything to do with Dropbox, Drobo, or anything that is a pure disk solution.

Now imagine that there's an app called Messages that gives access to Email, SMS, Voice, Facebook, etc.

Now imagine that you have a cool idea so you create an App and install it using only html/css/javascript with the platform's APIs.

Now imagine that it's always on and so it can receive content (messages, files, backups) directly from other peers without going out to someone else's network, but you can access it directly from any internet connection anywhere.

It's more similar to Firefox OS meets Heroku (with as big of a hard drive as you want to connect to it) than it is to any single-function device or service.

The product is the platform. That platform has both APIs and storage capacity. The product is NOT APIs alone nor is it storage capacity alone. Nor is it any single-function app or device. It's not anonymous, it's authenticated and trusted.

This is meant to be something that a high school student could reasonably learn to develop on, that a mom would use to search for things she's posted to social sites, that I would want to manage my music playlists on, and that my grandma will store and share photos from.

P.S. I have a problem with storage being tightly coupled with the device. I don't want to have to buy a new device to simply increase capacity year over year.

AJ ONeal 

[Alexandros Nipirakis]

I think that PDF is a bit old:  

http://www.filetransporter.com/for-individuals/

This is the current "generation" they are selling.  

One unit has a hard drive (2TB)  for 200 bucks, the other about 100 bucks has no internal hard drive (but apparently you can connect external ones).  I have seen pictures of the devices being opened - and it seems there is just a 2TB internal drive, 2.5 Inch size.  

I have to admit, I don't completely understand exactly how it works (when it was announced, I remembered it being a sort of "you buy one and join a distributed backup network" it seems the new ones are very similar to what you are talking about vis-a-vis I can backup to people's transporters that allow me to).  

FWIW - I think that there is plenty of room in this space for growth over time - the new Seagate "archive" hard drives look promising.  There are plenty of open source "backup" tools you could utilize that would help as well.  

http://www.seagate.com/products/enterprise-servers-storage/nearline-storage/archive-hdd/

I have personally played with ownCloud on my own server which is promising.   Completely different from what it seems you are trying to build, but not off the rails.   

For the record, I personally feel the "cloud" is overhyped - and I really have a hard time trusting it (the cloud as in the internet I trust, the cloud as in someone else's servers that I don't control - not so much).  Creating a virtual cloud with trusted partners (kind of like a reciprocal agreement for co-location between businesses) is a neat and probably good idea.  Having it being distributed reduces the chances that failure at any one node would destroy data.  

Unfortunately - every technology that is "disruptive" is using the cloud buzzword in some way, sort of reminiscent of how ".com" was appended to every name of a company 15-20 years ago.  

Kind Regards - 

Aleksei 

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[Alexandros Nipirakis]

OK - so it isn't storage, its more like S3 or Azure for private clouds?  Interesting.  

[AJ ONeal (Home)]

OK - so it isn't storage, its more like S3 or Azure for private clouds?  Interesting.  

For your average mom, it's more like a multiuser iPad you can access online instead of in your hand and which you from anywhere and share with friends and family online.

For technical people, it's similar to an Azure + S3 + Appliances in your home.

Once I have an online demo with the user interface I think it'll make more sense.

For the record, I personally feel the "cloud" is overhyped - and I really have a hard time trusting it (the cloud as in the internet I trust, the cloud as in someone else's servers that I don't control - not so much).  Creating a virtual cloud with trusted partners (kind of like a reciprocal agreement for co-location between businesses) is a neat and probably good idea.  Having it being distributed reduces the chances that failure at any one node would destroy data.  

I feel the same way. I originally didn't want to go with "cloud", but after talking with non-technical people, that seemed to be what they most associated with the idea. I.E. "home cloud" made more sense than "home server".

+1 for reciprocal co-location

AJ ONeal 

[AJ ONeal (Home)]

That's a rather large vision you've got there, AJ. :)

Yeah, I'm basically building an iPad that you access in the browser instead of a touch screen and that can be used for any type of private/peer-network application.

 

I'm curious if you've looked into Synology and how you think your product trumps (in the short term) what they've already done?

My platform is more webby/appy and less desktoppy.

I'm designing in for people like my mom and grandma, but accessible to techies. It's not a product for techies - more like an iPad (except a bit easier to develop for) and much less like a NAS application server.

It's not a storage solution with the potential for apps. It's an application platform with the potential for storage. 

In the interface the biggest difference with my vision is that the apps will be separate browser tabs (like an iPad) or kiosk mode desktop browser apps (possibly React Native on mobile platforms - but that's a ways off yet), not in modal blocks (like Windows).

That said, Synology looks really cool. I'm logged into it for the first time just now (I had heard about it before, but I hadn't used it).

I do want to get from home to enterprise, but I'm focusing on the small niche market first. And, just like the iPad, the enterprise use cases will come and they'll be very human experiences.

I do want to get a demo up like what Synology has so that it's easier for me to explain to people what this is. It is definitely more similar to Synology in the features respect, but more similar to AppleTV in the in-your-home respect.

AJ ONeal

[Bruce Boyes]

Have you considered just repurposing something like the Synology DS213J dual-drive NAS boxes? At their core they are a Linux board with a couple of HDD added. I have two of these running mirrored. So far in two years I have replaced one failing 2 TB drive (major brand, replaced under warranty) and this makes my point that you want mirrored drives. And Synology (there may be others as good or better) has that price point nailed. Their boxes are already very extensible; you may be able to do what you want on their hardware without too much hardship. I wish these boxes would email me when there is some SMART indication of a drive failing. 

I'm a hardware engineer (so can't comment much on the software aspects of your idea) and have no financial relationship to Synology, I just like their products.

Bruce

[steve christensen]

Thought I'd chime in as another happy Synology customer. Their administrative UI makes it super easy to configure and use, and there's an ecosystem of apps to turn your NAS into more than just network-attached-spinning disks.  As Bruce said, it's just a customized Linux system. 

Developer info: https://www.synology.com/en-us/support/developer#home 

If nothing else... seems like it'd be a good way to jumpstart your development so you can focus on the things that differentiate your ideas rather than the important-but-hard issues like hardware, storage mangement, etc. You could even punt on the off-site backup (there's Synology apps/integration for HiDrive, ElephantDrive, Symform, Glacier, etc)

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[Bruce Boyes]

Here's a pretty detailed review of their lower end systems: http://www.newegg.com/Product/SingleProductReview.aspx?reviewid=4221742 which means the DS214+ is the best value, but there is also a DS215J which replaces the DS213J.

This thread has got me thinking about maybe writing some apps to enhance use of these with monitoring and logging data from a few dozen remote systems. All the developer docs are there, with tools at sourceforge, in the link Steve posted.

Bruce