Develop and sell a "roku" like cloudron box.
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Imagine this, My family, fed up with censorship from social media and privacy concerns, decides to "cut the cord" on social media. We just have no alternatives to easily set up for non tech(assume we are non techies). Enter cloudron box. A device a bit bigger then a roku premier + that is a mini fanless pc with a 4 core chip and 16gb ram. It comes preinstalled with cloudron and 2 "social media" chat apps installed. It also comes with a instructional card on how to download the "cloudron app" to register a domain name and sync it with your box. For a low monthly fee you can get additional access to the cloudron app store and routine updates.
IF yall could make setting up a home hosted cloudron server as easy as installing a roku, you guys could create a whole new segment of the market by targetting social media "cord cutters" who still want to network with friends and family easily and own their own data. just saying.
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@mastadamus Love the idea. Currently, I think the "issue" (well, my take anyway) is that the apps are not there yet. We have seen this idea already with nextcloud in a box (or something like that). Those ideas haven't really taken off because the apps have to be really really good to compete in today's consumer market. To an extent, I think synology succeeds here because they just make their own core apps. I think any appliance centric approach has to invest in apps and also hardware design (both a bit out of reach for us at the moment). If anyone wants to try, would love to collaborate
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Not to mention, Cloudron also needs ARM support
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I have mused myself many times over that idea (not so bound to social media, but personal data) since my personal Cloudron runs on a Intel Nuc at home, which is also just a small box really.
Besides the mentioned with arm support, technically Cloudron already works in such home environments.While I would love it, same as @girish, to me it is a bit out of reach since, while it works for me, due to missing app polish and of course the hardware aspect, I mostly have to acknowledge that it is geeky.
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@girish you'd be surprised how well a Nextcloud box sells actually.
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@mastadamus very interesting, as I've also been thinking about something like this for families!
However, what if instead of a physical hardware box, there was a service that provided this? This could even ease out some friction of initial setup. Simply put in your family name and you're hooked up on {familyName}.somecleverdomain.name with family oriented apps (and of course an email address for each member of the family). I'm with @nebulon where I wasn't specifically thinking social media oriented, but you could have some basics: 1 photo sharing app (a must), Nextcloud for sharing files and possibly have a family calendar already setup and shared, Rocket.Chat for discussions, a webmail service, and eventually a video chat app as well.
Would that fit the bill?
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@mario https://nextcloud.com/box/ says the project has ended. I assumed it didn't do well from that.
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@girish that particular one (the official) box isn't available because WDLabs (part of WD) that made it was disbanded. There are "unofficial" boxes that do well though.
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@mario can you link to one or a few?
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@robi I can link to the most known one, yes - https://shop.hanssonit.se/product-category/nextcloud/home-sme-server/
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This would be excellent if we had ARM support (with a PI or something for a couple of apps).
Otherwise the problem here would be coming up with the best set of components that will perform well and be cost effective. Basically a NUC. Also I imagine if you're after an official one that would be out of the question just due to the logistics of making something like this work combined with the fact that the company is 2 guys who already maintain more packages than any mere mortal should be able to maintain.
EDIT: Now my mind drifted to a custom bootloader and distro called (CloudronOS) based on Ubuntu lol. Again, the overhead on @staff would be unreasonable but hey, maybe someone else could start something like this? Obviously with the blessing of @staff for brand usage etc etc etc.
EDIT 2: To clarify what I mean by a custom OS and custom hardware, I was thinking something like what System76 does: https://system76.com/
The device would be something like this? https://system76.com/desktops/meerkat
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@thetomester13 Yes. I think some people might prefer they own their own hardware but at the end of the day, as long as its very clear that they own all the data, its not being snooped on and very importantly the setup is easy, I think it would fit the bill. I'm running my own cloudron server hosted at home. I Run ad blocker as a docker in my router. If their was a service that could give my other non tech skilled family members the ability to do what I do without all the config hassle it would sell. Lots of families would jump on adblocker for instance if it was a part of a "one click" install family of apps.
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@girish I think you are right concerning the apps. The hardware is easy imo. You can source "cheap" price but decently made fanless mini pc's like the kind represented by the procteli. The hard part is the app side and the domain registration configuration side. It would need to be super super easy so "aunt jessy" can figure it out and be up in running within 10-15 mins. But man if someone could do that, I really think they'd make a killing. Adguard, rocketchat(or similiar) nexcloud, and some photo sharing app and family calendar. call it the "family connection package" lol
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Let's say the Cloudron box takes off. What would consumers need to do to get it "online" at their home? Any ports to open with the ISP or would this all work by default?
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Other providers have tried this and largely failed becuase the software just isn't there yet, imo.
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@humptydumpty It would definitely require port forwarding I would think.
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So we are back at square one! Promote Cloudron as the best solution for those interested and capable of setting it up. Or, as some are offering, don't paying for a managed Cloudron. I would imagine though that the selling point would have to be spot on... but what is the selling point? Privacy? Data control? Ease of use? Backups?
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@scooke the selling point would be data ownership, privacy, connectivity etc. I know a lot of family members who would absolutely love to share and use the environment that cloudron offers. With the productivity apps, the media apps, the communication platforms etc. Yet they lack the tech skills to build a server and self host or host at a VPS. A pre setup ready to go box that requires minimal setup on user part like registering a domain and maybe forwarding a port or two would be golden. I do agree though that the software isn't there yet and neither is the security. My home hosted cloudron actually gets 'attacked' multiple times daily. Those security features would have to be squared away big time to make it wide consumer product.
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@mastadamus said in Develop and sell a "roku" like cloudron box.:
and maybe forwarding a port or two would be golden
Don't forget that more and more residential internet connections don't get a public ip any more (keyword cgnat). Plus forwarding ports can still be quite a challenge for the technically challenged. If you want to make it easy for everyone you would need some sort of proxying service that would provide a public endpoint for these users.
@mastadamus said in Develop and sell a "roku" like cloudron box.:
My home hosted cloudron actually gets 'attacked' multiple times daily
That is most likely the usual background chatter that will happen once you expose a service to the public internet. Could as well be mitigated if you don't expose directly, but only through a third party.
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@fbartels most of it is, some of it isn't unfortunately. Especially on my WordPress site. I have a WAF running and I get quite a few legit complex style and brute force attacks blocked every month. Also I get attempted tls heartbleed attacks fairly routinely thats stopped by my ips.
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@nebulon I had an idea. What if cloudron partnered with local "resellers" like cable companies. You sign up for the service , a tech/installer comes to house, sets up the "box" starts the service forwards the ports. Done.
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@mastadamus I imagine that would result in a support nightmare for them considering not everyone who has internet is technically literate, unfortunately.
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@atrilahiji prob so.
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I have some potential significant sponsorship interest in this if we could assemble enough people to build.
Also worth a look for inspiration: https://www.odoo.com/app/iot
What do you all recommend as fanless boxes to base this sort of thing?
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@marcusquinn there's a ton out there. I bet it could be cheaper if you had a contract for bulk and care less about looks.
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Recent project doing something similar. I am wondering however how they really want to make this effortless for everybody. Especially since this centers on nextcloud.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/nextbox/nextbox-your-own-private-cloud-for-home-and-office
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@mastadamus Nice, of course I should have searched first but wondered what people here used. I suppose anything could be co-branded with some laser etching.
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@fbartels Interesting, although to go mass market they could do with some work on their branding and presentation.
Roku completely nails branding and presentation, and Sky TV / Now TV are the kings of branding and packaging in the UK.
I feel as a Consumer / Pro appliance it would need a little more curation on the apps where the best for each area were pre-configured, and there would need to be preferred partners setup for certain links (Domain/DNS/Backups) but I could see this being packaged as a box that people put alongside their main TV in homes and in their IT cupboard in offices.
@Mastadamus Maybe we can coin a new phrase: "cloud-cutters"
@girish @nebulon I do think the term "Private Cloud" should be used as the primary explanatory catch-phrase across your branding and presentation, and make "Self-Hosting" secondary because that is a little more intimidating.
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@fbartels said in Develop and sell a "roku" like cloudron box.:
keyword cgnat
Carrier-grade NAT - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrier-grade_NAT -
@marcusquinn I agree emphasizing "Private Cloud" is a very good idea, everybody can get a feel for what it is, even if they have no idea of how.
I mean, the general public doesn't even know what hosting is.^^"
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So this is something that I have been contemplating for about a month now.
My thoughts are this, you get a Nuc that supports Vtx/vtd and then you install proxmox on the device. Then set up opnsense as one vm, and cloudron as another.
Then do all the heavy lifting for the user ( could be a templates image installed to make this process much faster) and make it so they just have to plug and play and use the service.
An additional income stream could be a subscription based support level
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@privsec not bad, I do something similar with ESXi and ZeroShell
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Here's a similar idea that has the hardware part mostly figured out:
