Connecting a USB hard drive to a openwrt router without a usb port

Hardware Questions and Recommendations
1

Hi friends,
I would like to connect a usb hard drive to my
openwrt router that, unfortunately, has no usb port.

The purpose is to use the usb hard drive for home surveillance (e.g. recording, using FFmpeg, the audio/video stream coming from a webcam).

I saw that there are on the market many usb ethernet adapters but I am not sure if they are suitable for my case.

Before buying one, can you tell me if this the right way to solve the issue and, eventually, suggest me which one to buy (unless one is as good as the other)?

Thanks in advance for your support.

2

can't connect a usb ethernet adapter to your drive.

could get a cheap Pogoplug or Dockstar, to serve the storage across the network.

2 Likes
3

Then you can't do that.

The only alternative, which might be a blessing in disguise, would be getting a standalone NAS (or building/ buying/ repurposing) a x86_64 file server.

3 Likes
4

What device is doing the encoding?
Seems that is where the storage should be.

5

Thanks for your suggestions but it seems that these workarounds are not so cheap as expected (I was looking for a no-cost/very cheap solution).

At this point I think it would be better to buy a new USB-equipped router that supports openwrt (perhaps selling the one I currently use, a Xiaomi AX3000T).

I would also have at home an old TD-W8970 router (cpu 500 mhz, 8 MB flash, 64 MB ram) equipped with a usb port, but I doubt I would be able to install all the packages needed to use ffmpeg. And even if I could, I doubt it would be able to handle the audio/video stream from a performance point of view.

6

It is a cheap TP-Link Tapo C210 which can record only on microSD cards or on Cloud (but it is not free of charge)

7

low end routers might be good enough if you're capturing an unmodified stream, without any kind of transcoding.

a Pogoplug or Dockstar is probably $10 on eBay, those devices are EOL since at least 8 years.

8

I'm missing something.

9

I will try with my old TD-W8970 and let you know ...

10

What is unclear?

11

Well, you say it can either store locally, on an SD card, or on their cloud.

You say nothing about it being capable of remote storage.
You, actually, wrote the opposite:

1 Like
12

What do you mean exactly with remote storage?

A third party (different from the TP-Link one) cloud service?

A remote device that I own where I can connect a disk drive and that supports ffmpeg (e.g. a remote openwrt router, a remote pc ...)?

13

Other than SD card and Cloud do the cameras offer a third option?

Even if it did, how would you use it?

This really has nothing to do with OpenWrt unless you need to add file sharing (SMB/SAMBA).

14

Your C210 should have RTSP which allows local recording, probably just get a cheap Raspberry Pi, or Libre Sweet Potato to be your server and leave the router alone.

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15

Unfortunately, no.

I would connect a usb drive to the openwrt router and then with ffmpeg and rtsp protocol I would record the stream to the usb drive.

Of course it is not the reason why openwrt was born but it can be an option for a zero cost solution using an existing device

16

Yes, it supports rtsp.

This could be an alternative solution but I should buy and keep on another device.

17

:person_facepalming:

You just told us:

:expressionless:

18

I thought it was clear from my first posts that the camera also supports a streaming protocol such as RTSP, otherwise how else could I have used FFMPEG from an openwrt router?

However, just to be precise and summarize, the camera has 3 recording possibilities:

  1. internal SD card
  2. TP-Link cloud
  3. RTSP protocol

I hope this clarify.

19

With enough time you will be able to create "fake sd" to usb mass-storage controller on FPGA. Good luck!

20

Given that I don't know FPGA, probably my question is stupid: where the usb disk would be placed? Next to the camera or at another site (with Lan/wan access)?

Can you give me some more details of your solution in order to start studying?

Thanks.