Is it possible to some LED's mounted in a 3.5 or 5.25 bay that show the status of the drives as seen in the unRAID main page? 

Any ideas?

LCD connected to LPT or USB... software for control is LCDProc

 

See this thread http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=2566.0

I was thinking more along the lines of a simple 3 color indicator.

 

Like green when all the drives are sleeping, blue when active, red when some type of error (like sync error).

 

Maybe even just lighting some cold cathod bulbs 

I started something similar a few weeks ago, but the project got put on hold...employer and personal priorities took over.

 

I wanted to control the case's HD activity LED to reflect the array status through the parallel port. I was looking at this website http://www.epanorama.net/circuits/parallel_output.html for the circuitry and linux control. It would require GCC to compile the interface to print directly to the port. I was going to use Joe's script for periodic notification http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=140.0 as a starting point. I never did decide if I wanted it to be illuminated to show a fault (red) or illuminated to show okay (green). Then again since I needed to replace the LED (it's amber), I thought why not use a bi-color one and get both features into one visual display.

 

Maybe once things claim down I'll look back into doing it.

I would like to see a simple LED system that mimicked the 'balls' unRAID uses to indicate a drive's status:

 

Red - write error

Green - OK

Blue - unformatted

Orange - I think there's an orange one, but I can't remember what it does

I found a multicolor LED but so far I don't know much more.

 

http://hackaday.com/2009/06/29/parts-shiftbrite-rgb-led-module-a6281/

There are a number of parallel port display projects.

 

I think it would be better to use something like the Roku Soundbridge.

Here is something I use.

http://www.cotrone.com/rob/archives/2006/04/roku_soundbridg_1.html

 

It's pretty neat and does not cost all that much for the small one.

Also, it can double duty as an MP3 player with firefly (I compiled the mt-daapd a couple years back).

 

Another option I've explored and implemented is using the X10 environment with a serial port.

 

By using the CM11A (I believe) and a a few X10 modules, you can light up regular house lamps(REMOTELY), dim them, flash them, etc, etc. I use them with color lava lamps.

 

Then by judging the color and the rate of flow, I can tell how long an issue has been present.

 

Ideally I think we need an email interface. Not all that hard.

I'm just waiting for 5.0 to come out with a standard plugin support architecture and then I'll move forward.

By using the CM11A (I believe) and a a few X10 modules, you can light up regular house lamps(REMOTELY), dim them, flash them, etc, etc. I use them with color lava lamps.

 

Then by judging the color and the rate of flow, I can tell how long an issue has been present.

 

That is brilliant...

 

The only downside I can imagine is the following scenario:

 

You and your wife/girlfriend return home after a romantic dinner.  Your bedroom is awash in red, pulsating light from a lava lamp.  Your wife/gf assumes you are setting the mood and starts disrobing....you rush off to tend to your server error. 

The MaxOrbital MX series has good linux support

 

http://www.matrixorbital.com/

 

One feature I like, is that it has 4 temp sensors and 3 fan headers, that support PWM for programmable fan speed control.

Seems CrystalFonts also has fan control now, and they have a 3.5" bay mount too:

 

http://www.crystalfontz.com/products/631/

I have a Matrix Orbital M2 display now working on unRAID.

 

This is a 2x20 display, with keypad.

 

The way I am writing the display program is macro based.  Each screen is based on a macro.  A macro is a program run from the console prompt that will produce 40 characters of output (2 rows of 20 characters concatenated together).

 

So anyone can write a macro in any language or shell script (awk, php, java, delphi, perl, ruby, etc.) as long as it can be invoked from a shell script, and it returns EXACTLY 40 characters.... so you will have to pad numbers, etc., to make the output 40 characters.

 

Macros will be stored in a specified directory on the flash, and a web interface lets you enable/disable them.

 

The enabled ones will rotate, meaning they display for x-seconds, then the next one, etc., and after all of the ones you have enabled are shown, it loops back to the beginning.

 

Macros can be conditional.  If the macro output starts with character 254, it will be skipped.  So you can write a macro to check for low disk space, and have it output a single character 254 if disk space is OK, and a full 40 character message if disk space is NOT OK.

 

I also will implement some way of designating macros as important/errors, which will take precedence over normal screens.

 

The macros can be used by other flavors of displays too, such as CrystalFonts... all I have to do is change the driver code.

 

I chose the Matrix Orbital because it has good support, and it has 4 controllable fan headers.... so it will also be used to control fan speeds in unRAID.  This one also has the keypad, so I can put commands on the keypad, such as start/stop the array.

 

Any other suggestions?

I had actually been thinking of building a display using the top line for a status message and the bottom 20 characters for each drive's status.

 

_ = sleeping (Z maybe).

O = Online (awake, OK).

?  = Unknown or questionable and needs attention.

!  = Off line or critical status.

. or space = no drive installed.

 

I suppose we could add

T = temperature alarm

F = Full ...but how many of us have full drives ;-)

 

It could look like

 

online 20Gb free

O_____OOO..........

 

 

That's what I like about the macro approach.  All you have to do is write a script that prints those characters, in a 40-character string.... and my driver will put it on the display.

Wow, I like the setup that bubbaQ has. A Vacuum display would look cool, requiring no back lighting wither. Back in the days I used to use LCDProc on my Linux box via a Parallel Port connection using a 16x2 Dot Matrix display. I might try and get it to run with my unRAID box. Any links dedicated to this setup? Cheers!