Sumvision Aero Lite NAS Dongle Review

[Shady]

I bought one of these 7dayshop.com - Online Store (http://www.7dayshop.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=777_5&products_id=111496)

http://www.7dayshop.com/catalog/images/products/prod_111496.jpg
as i wanted a cheap way to stream media to mine and daughters xbox without leaving pc on.

It was only ?16.99 delivered (although the delivery took a week).

In the box, comes the dongle itself, a tiny cat5 cable, power adaptor and the manual on a disc.
After a quick read thru of the manual, and finding that the deafualt user and pass was admin/admin i connected by typing the ip addy into my browser and was greeted by this screen
http://www.digital-kaos.co.uk/forums/members/226183-shady/albums/sumvision-aero-lite-nas-dongle/5644-screen-grab-config-page.jpg

I hooked up a usb drive and it was recognised straight away (has to be fat32).
i opened up filezilla to ftp my movies over to the 'public' folder that the dongle had created, and noticed that the ftp speed was low at 5mbps.. after disabling ipv4 large packet offload and tcp checksum offload, this went up to 16mbps (still not the fastest, but certainly a lot better)

So far so good, now for me, it cant all be plain sailing.. something was bound to go wrong... but no.. after ftp had finished, fired up my media player and the aero was listed, same with xbox..
http://www.digital-kaos.co.uk/forums/members/226183-shady/albums/sumvision-aero-lite-nas-dongle/5646-xbox-media-server.jpg

after selecting the aero, files showed up withing 30 seconds

http://www.digital-kaos.co.uk/forums/members/226183-shady/albums/sumvision-aero-lite-nas-dongle/5647-xbox-file-list.jpg

the dongle does both upnp and samba sharing, as you can see in the next screen grab
http://www.digital-kaos.co.uk/forums/members/226183-shady/albums/sumvision-aero-lite-nas-dongle/5645-screen-grab-my-pc.jpg

streaming is smooth, with no jerkiness (xbox will only play file types it likes so no mkv etc. obviously for this price the dongle wont transcode on the fly).

It also has a toorent client built in, so any torrent files can be handled by the dongle to download thus negating the need for the pc to be left on.

All in all it was easy to set up, and cheap as chips.. anyone with a usb hdd knocking about should certainly think about this
the cheapest single bay nas case i found was over ?60 and other than having a drive inside so a few less cables it does nothing different to this... :)

[PhilS]

Thanks for this excellent description of the set up of this dongle and use with a HD. However, I get a problem whereby I can't get past a username/password dialogue. I do see an 'Aero-lite' entity in Windows explorer, but any attempt to expand and view it is met with a password prompt which I can't get past.
Using admin/admin or guest/guest or any combination of those or even my Windows profile login/password doesn't cut it. Does anyone have any ideas please?

Cheers Phil


I bought one of these 7dayshop.com - Online Store (http://www.7dayshop.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=777_5&products_id=111496)

http://www.7dayshop.com/catalog/images/products/prod_111496.jpg
as i wanted a cheap way to stream media to mine and daughters xbox without leaving pc on.

It was only ?16.99 delivered (although the delivery took a week).

In the box, comes the dongle itself, a tiny cat5 cable, power adaptor and the manual on a disc.
After a quick read thru of the manual, and finding that the deafualt user and pass was admin/admin i connected by typing the ip addy into my browser and was greeted by this screen
http://www.digital-kaos.co.uk/forums/members/226183-shady/albums/sumvision-aero-lite-nas-dongle/5644-screen-grab-config-page.jpg

I hooked up a usb drive and it was recognised straight away (has to be fat32).
i opened up filezilla to ftp my movies over to the 'public' folder that the dongle had created, and noticed that the ftp speed was low at 5mbps.. after disabling ipv4 large packet offload and tcp checksum offload, this went up to 16mbps (still not the fastest, but certainly a lot better)

So far so good, now for me, it cant all be plain sailing.. something was bound to go wrong... but no.. after ftp had finished, fired up my media player and the aero was listed, same with xbox..
http://www.digital-kaos.co.uk/forums/members/226183-shady/albums/sumvision-aero-lite-nas-dongle/5646-xbox-media-server.jpg

after selecting the aero, files showed up withing 30 seconds

http://www.digital-kaos.co.uk/forums/members/226183-shady/albums/sumvision-aero-lite-nas-dongle/5647-xbox-file-list.jpg

the dongle does both upnp and samba sharing, as you can see in the next screen grab
http://www.digital-kaos.co.uk/forums/members/226183-shady/albums/sumvision-aero-lite-nas-dongle/5645-screen-grab-my-pc.jpg

streaming is smooth, with no jerkiness (xbox will only play file types it likes so no mkv etc. obviously for this price the dongle wont transcode on the fly).

It also has a toorent client built in, so any torrent files can be handled by the dongle to download thus negating the need for the pc to be left on.

All in all it was easy to set up, and cheap as chips.. anyone with a usb hdd knocking about should certainly think about this
the cheapest single bay nas case i found was over ?60 and other than having a drive inside so a few less cables it does nothing different to this... :)

[Shady]

leave both blank. anonymous user is set as default on this dongle, however if you do want to set up an ftp account then do below

u need to access the web config page of dongle by typing '192.168.1.80' into your browser. the user and pass it asks for will be admin/admin.. then on ftp tab you need to add your pc to the allowed list. click on 'new'. new window opens up, then in that window, in account name, type the name of your pc.. (get this by clicking start button in widowns, and right clicking and choosing properties on 'computer') leave password blank and click read/write button. then click add.. u may need to restart dongle and/or pc, but that should be u done

[PhilS]

Many Thanks Shady,
I'm not sure if I need ftp access, I'm just using the attached Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex drive as a music
resource for my Hi Fi. So just read/write permissions will suffice.
I did try leaving the fields blank, but the OK button remains greyed-out unless you fill out the user-password fields.Does that suggest I need a registry tweak?
Cheers
Phil


leave both blank. anonymous user is set as default on this dongle, however if you do want to set up an ftp account then do below

u need to access the web config page of dongle by typing '192.168.1.80' into your browser. the user and pass it asks for will be admin/admin.. then on ftp tab you need to add your pc to the allowed list. click on 'new'. new window opens up, then in that window, in account name, type the name of your pc.. (get this by clicking start button in widowns, and right clicking and choosing properties on 'computer') leave password blank and click read/write button. then click add.. u may need to restart dongle and/or pc, but that should be u done

[Shady]

ftp is better than windows explorer at transferring files. d/l filezilla and use that

[niceblokedave]

Shady i have a couple of questions if thats ok.
1) Are you able to access the hard drive plugged into the aero with 2 devices at the same time (ie) laptop and a 360 ?.
2) You said that it works fine with your 'media player' so i guess you are not talking about your 360 on that occasion ?. Do you think any networked media player would be able to see it (ie) western digital tv box for example ?.
3) Have you had a chance to play with the torrent client yet and if so does it work ok ?.

Thank you for your efforts in writing your review, it is pointing me in the right direction !.

[Shady]

1: yes have had lappy and my media player working at same time
2: if media player can read samba or upnp then it can stream from this
3: i have.. and it downloads just fine :)

[niceblokedave]

Blinkin heck that was a quick reply LOL THX . One other question if i can please. You said you were only able to get it upto 16mbps . This is the first time i have ever considered using a NAS style setup. Could that low speed be a problem if i wanted to use it to stream HD video to a media player ?.
Sorry if thats a dumb question LOL.

[Shady]

have actually got it up to 23-25mbps now with a bit of help from a dk member.. but thats ftp speed im talking about which requires the data to go pc>router>dongle>hdd, and youve got to remember that write speeds are lower than read speeds..ive streamed hd media from this device and its cool.
I believe that 5mbps is sufficient for hd streaming...

[niceblokedave]

THX for your help !. I think i have made up my mind to give this a go. For ?17 it seems like a bargain . I've looked at a few few NAS dongles and this looks like one of the better ones at a silly cheap price. THX again

[Shady]

np mate, everyone on dk here to help :)

[Shady]

@phils if login isnt worjking for you try this if your on win 7

Below is how to make the reg FIX. Resort to it ONLY if yours doesn't work properly with Windows 7.
Make a new text document in Notepad, and enter the following lines,
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Lsa]
"LmCompatibilityLevel"=dword:00000001
Save this as a reg file - extension "NASFix.reg" (without the quotes).
All you have to do is double click on the resulting reg file to enter it into the registry.

[mpbrien]

I've used the bitTorrent client on the Aero Lite to download files, but it seems that as soon as the file is downloaded the device stops uploading, resulting is bad share ratios. I guess there is no workaround for this?

Has anyone found a firmware update for this device?

[modnnell]

This may be a stupid question, but as this has a usb input, would you be able to use a usb hub and connect two or three external disk drives through this?

Thanks to your reviews I am now looking at buying one.

[billy2]

i would say something like this would work better

Icy Box - Ib-3221stu-b - Aluminium Case For 2 X 3.5" Sata Hdd, Jbod System With Usb 2.0 Interface - Easyswap Technology: Amazon.co.uk: Computers & Accessories

[billy2]

have actually got it up to 23-25mbps now with a bit of help from a dk member.. but thats ftp speed im talking about which requires the data to go pc>router>dongle>hdd, and youve got to remember that write speeds are lower than read speeds..ive streamed hd media from this device and its cool.
I believe that 5mbps is sufficient for hd streaming...


would you like to put some light on this shady dont keep it to yourself. lol

cheers

[tizerheads]

Ok, so i got everything working, except the xbox 360 part. But, my xbox360 can actually see " Aero-Lite:1 " but when i try to connect, it fails everytime. Can anybody shed some light on this??

[geoffb37]

i have had this for some time but never got round to setting up.
i formated a 1tb drive fat 32 , my dongle is showing up in my bt hub 3 and is ok
whenever i try to connect via ip or sdisk the connection drops out.
also i can connect when usb drive is not connected?
has anyone had this much hassle?

[ets]

thanks merci

[kudus]

ftp is better than windows explorer at transferring files.