The hard drive is provided by Western Digital

Mar 18, 2016 13:43 GMT  ·  By

We reported last year that ownCloud was in talks with WD (Western Digital) Labs to help them develop a community project that would bring a self-hosted cloud storage device in users' homes.

The idea behind the self-hosted device, which will be powered by the ownCloud Server software, was to combine a Raspberry Pi single-board computer with a Western Digital disk drive into an easy-to-install and out-of-the-box container.

Well, it looks like the community's response was more than positive, and many great proposals and ideas were received for the ownCloud Pi project. And today, they have even greater news for us, as the first images are available for download.

The ownCloud Pi images are based on the latest Snappy Ubuntu Core 16.04 LTS operating system, which was designed by Canonical for embedded and IoT (Internet of Things) devices, as well as the new Raspberry Pi 3 Model B SBC.

"We’re looking for help in the ownCloud, Ubuntu, Raspberry Pi and WD Labs communities for help to test and improve them and will be able to make available a first batch of about 30 devices at the end of next week," say the ownCloud developers in today's announcement.

Current obstacles, challenges, and the road ahead

At the moment, the team is working hard on finishing their ownCloud Pi device solution based on the Xenial Xerus edition of Snappy Ubuntu Core. Thus, the new 64-bit Raspberry Pi 3 computer helps them with the obstacles encountered during previous tests running on the Raspberry Pi 2 board, such as support for files larger than 2GB.

Therefore, it looks like the decision was taken, and the final ownCloud Pi device, which should be available as a preview later this spring, will be powered by the Raspberry Pi 3 single-board computer. In the coming days, we should be able to purchase the first production-ready version of the ownCloud Pi device.