The Young Maker's TinyNAS Is a Fully-Functional Micro-Miniaturized Homage to Synology Products

Pseudonymous 14-year-old tinkerer "The Young Maker," hereafter simply "Young," has put together a miniaturized homage to the popular Synology family of network attached storage (NAS) boxes — but instead of 3.5" hard drives, it uses microSD cards connected to an Espressif ESP32.

"TinyNAS takes inspiration from Tobychui's original USB form factor WebStick designed for the ESP8266," Young explains. "I've adapted and enhanced the concept, transforming it into a TinyNAS specifically built for the ESP32, offering improved performance and support for up to three SD cards. Resembling a miniature NAS, TinyNAS serves as a web server that connects to your home WiFi. It enables local access through mDNS in your network and can be accessed remotely by configuring port-forwarding settings on your home router."

The appearance of the TinyNAS, in its 3D-printed housing, is designed to mimic that of Synology's two- and four-bay NAS boxes — complete with three hot-swap drive bays. The sleds for these bays aren't quite big enough to fit a 3.5" hard drive, though: they're designed for a custom carrier board which breaks out the pins of a microSD card.

The Wi-Fi radio on the Espressif ESP32 which powers the TinyNAS is used to provide access to files stored on the microSD cards — including the ability to upload and download data, display photos, stream music and videos, and even act as a server for static sites, all accessible from a web interface.

"While the ESP32 theoretically supports network speeds up to 8Mbps, real-world performance typically hovers around 1Mbps for concurrent read and write operations," Young admits.

"This could be influenced by SD card capabilities. Consequently, I recommend avoiding large resources, such as pictures or CSS files, on the TinyNAS. Opt for using CDNs [Content Delivery Networks] for scripts or employing compressed image formats like JPEG to enhance efficiency."

Full instructions on building your own TinyNAS are available on Young's Instructables page.