What is the Lollipop Cloud project?
The Lollipop Cloud project is an attempt to do the following.
- The Lollipop Cloud is born of a desire to self host when nomadic, facilitating sync when away from a reliable connection, or just wanting to leave the various corporate clouds that harvest your data.
- It’s an attempt to lower the friction of self hosting. Preferably with a Raspberry Pi, Orange Pi, or other lean, small ARM mini-computer boards.
- It’s an attempt to empower users so you can control your own destiny online.
- It’s open source
- A cloud in a very small box is the goal. A box the size of a credit card or as big as a rack mount server. YOU decide.
If that makes total sense you’re in the minorty and can stop reading. The rest of the humans walking the planet may keep reading for an expansion of the above.
What Is a Lollipop Cloud?
A “Lollipop Cloud” is an ARM mini-computer which self-hosts a personal cloud
Having written that statement our tech bro alarm bells rang loud and clear.
Unfortunately that “simple” statement unpacks and expands into a much larger description, conversation and nuance.
If you’re willing: we’d like to make an effort at expanding and unpacking the statement so it makes sense and is accessible.
Lollipop
AKA : “router on a stick”
In IT circles there is a concept of a “lollipop router” (or “router on a stick” depending on who you talk to). This is a fancy, gibberish way of saying “take a router, make it super small, put a single ethernet port on it, plug it into a specially configured switch and have fancy networking features”.
It’s a really small router roughly the size of a USB thumb drive (no bigger than the size of your fist) with a network port on it. It can make things happen at the networking level. The “things” that “happen” are wholly arbitrary. “Router” is a pretty broad term that covers a lot of ground in the world of networking and IT.
Distilled
In the context of the Lollipop Cloud: it’s a small, useful computer thingy.
We use the term “Lollipop” because we are working to facilitate using very small, inexpensive mini-computers to deploy a personal cloud (more on this term shortly).
Lollipops are also a tastey treat.
[Editors note: KemoNine used the term in passing early on and it stuck.]
Summary
A tastey treat and/or an inexpensive, very small computer that can be used for doing cool things like self-hosting (more on this term shortly).
ARM Mini Computer
A “Mini Computer” is essentially a computer the size of a 6” phone or smaller. Think a smart phone without the screen, speakers, cellular data connection, Android or iOS.
ARM is a type of computer processor (similar to “Intel Inside [a Dell]“) that’s commonly used in mobile devices (phones, tablets, other stuff).
It should also be noted “computer” in this sense doesn’t necessarily include a monitor, keyboard, mouse or other things typically associated with a modern computer. The term really means the “tower” part of a desktop computer similar but stripped down the absolute fundamentals.
Distilled
A really small computer motherboard inside a small plastic case that uses an “ARM” computer processor with minimal features built in.
Summary
A good example of an “ARM Mini Computer” is the Raspberry Pi. It’s a super small computer that you can put into an inexpensive case to do ‘things’ and ‘stuff’. Things and stuff like a Personal Cloud (more on this term shortly).
Self-Hosts Personal Cloud
Self-Hosting. Oh boy.
Personal Cloud. Uh oh.
When the Tech Bro’s talk about “self-hosting” and “personal cloud” what they are really saying is: “my e-penis is HUUUUUGE and I run all my own online services like e-mail, website hosting, database, website analystics, blog, etc”.
Self-Hosting [a Personal Cloud] is taking control of your destiny online and not relying upon outside organizations (large or small; Google or your local ISP) for your services. “Services” is a fancy way of saying “anything you do online”. Services can mean e-mail, blog hosting, chat, “cloud”, etc.
Distilled
A way for you to take control of your own data online and still be able to collaborate and interact with others.
Summary
A good example of self-hosting is the Lollipop Cloud project. ALL of our online “stuff” like our website, chat rooms, Gitea are self-hosted. We have a Lollipop Cloud device deployed that allows us to have a website, website analytics, source code version control, chat rooms on Matrix, chat rooms on XMPP (Jabber), a bridge between chat rooms and more.
We control our own destiny online for the Lollipop Project and the goal is to allow others to accomplish the same with minimal effort.