The High Level

When I bought my NAS Drive, I had no clue that it could do so much. Once I started poking around with it, I learned about all the nice features it had to offer. Out of the box, it comes with a few nice enhancements but anything else you need can easily be executed within a Docker container. That’s where all the fun happens. That’s my story.

High Level View of NIAS TV

So this is what eventually evolved as I started poking around. At a high level the following components are described.

  • TV – All my TV’s have coax connections into a utility room in the basement. That makes it easy to connect up any service I would ever need without having to run wire. Most signals these days are wireless anyway but it’s still a feature.
  • Antenna Array – I hate satellite and cable TV so I installed two OTA antennas into my attic space. I have found digital signals very touchy so I didn’t want to split the signal too much (so I have two!).
  • VECOAX – These little buggers are key to taking any HDMI signal and injecting into a coax signal. Digital signals (as stated earlier) are very touchy so this is a game of trial and error. All signals, when successful, are injected into the antenna as another channel. It’s worth noting, that nothing is transmitted OTA. It’s all internal.
  • Stations – These are mini PC’s that I got off Amazon for a few hundred bucks a piece. They come installed with Windows so they run the C# module very easily. They are all placed behind a firewall as they don’t require any outside access whatsoever. This also makes them more stable and reliable. I currently have 5 in full-time operation and one designated for development only.
  • NAS Drive – I have two NAS drives that function independently. I have a secondary drive so that I can load one into the RV and go camping with it. The main NAS drive contains more features including a full installation of Docker. The secondary server will synch with the main server via manual replication software that I execute every now and again. We will be automating this soon.