rpi-mass-image-writer

Raspberry Pi that writes to many USB drives at one go. Hardware buttons available to select the stored disk image to copy as well as to shutdown the device.

Disk images are transferred to the Raspberry Pi via a Samba shared folder. The selected image is then written in parallel to all the drives at once using the dd, pv and tee commands

Everything in with a nice 3D printed case.

The innards

#How to use?

1. Login to shared folder
2. Transfer image files via samba to shared folder
3. Plug in all USB flash drives to write to
4. Hit left button to enumerate all images and drives
5. Use up/down buttons to select image
6. Press the right button to start writing to drives. You can press it again to terminate writing.
7. Press the select button (extreme left) to shutdown device properly to prevent data corruption. The words "Shutting down" will remain even after the device has completely shutdown, so just wait for the activity light to turn off before pulling the power.

#Hardware

1. Raspberry Pi 2 Model B (Others will work just as well)
2. Adafruit i2c 16x2 LCD Pi Plate with keypad
3. USB hubs (not all hubs are supported well, use the ones from this list)
4. USB SD card adapters
5. USB Gigabit adapter (optional)

#Setting up

I use Arch Linux as it is stripped down and boots up far faster than Raspbian. With some modifications to the setup instructions, you can run this on Raspbian as well.

##Installing packages and configuring i2C

pacman -Syu python2 i2c-tools samba pv git

modprobe i2c-dev
echo "i2c-dev" > /etc/modules-load.d/i2c-dev.conf

On the latest versions of Arch Linux, it seems the i2c bus is disabled by default. We have to enable it. Source

nano /boot/config.txt

#Add the following lines
#Start
#If needed, replace the value below with "bcm2708-rpi-b.dtb" or "bcm2708-rpi-b-plus.dtb" depending on your Raspberry Pi type.
device_tree=bcm2709-rpi-2-b.dtb 
device_tree_param=i2c1=on
device_tree_param=spi=on
#End

reboot

##Clone this repo and run the app

git clone https://github.com/algoaccess/rpi-mass-image-writer.git
cd rpi-mass-image-writer
python2 writer.py

The LCD screen should now turn on.

##Setting up samba

The folder we are sharing is the images directory.

nano /etc/samba/smb.conf
#Add/Modify the following lines to your smb.conf file between #start and #end
#Start
[global]
workgroup = WORKGROUP
server string = SD Duplicator
security = user
log file = /var/log/samba/%m.log
max log size = 50
dns proxy = no

[images]
path = /root/rpi-mass-image-writer/images
writable = yes
#End


#Create a user for samba
smbpasswd -a root
systemctl enable smbd

##Change hostname (optional)

In case you don't like the default alarmpi hostname.

hostnamectl set-hostname pi-usb-replicator

##Using a separate USB Gigabit adapter

Transfering large image files takes a long time on the internal 10/100 adapter so I opted to use a Gigabit adapter instead. Note that Pi is using just USB 2.0 with other devices sharing the bus so the speedup is only just about 2x instead of 10x faster which is still better than previously.

cp /etc/netctl/examples/ethernet-dhcp /etc/netctl/eth1
nano /etc/netctl/eth1

#Change the "Interface" value from eth0 to eth1

netctl enable eth1
reboot
#Test the network connection

##Starting on boot

cp /root/rpi-mass-image-writer/writer.service /etc/systemd/system/
systemctl enable writer.service
reboot

#References

1. Open Source Image Duplicator
2. Adafruit Char Plate LCD
3. i2c setup on Arch Linux
4. Rpi 2 Model B 3D case top
5. Rpi 2 Model B 3D case bottom
6. Enable i2c on Arch Linux
7. dd to multiple drives