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DigiEra OmniCore at CES 2026: NAS That Searches Files Like ChatGPT

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For most designers and filmmakers, storage is the quiet problem that never gets a mood board. Projects start on phones, move through cameras and laptops, and end up scattered across drives and cloud folders that you half remember naming six months ago. CES 2026 is full of AI-driven devices and next-gen connectivity, but DigiEra’s booth is interesting because it treats storage as part of the creative environment, not just a spec to tick off on a spreadsheet.

The lineup tells a single story across four products. OmniCore is the modular, all-flash AI NAS that wants to be the studio’s private brain. Endura is the rugged field drive that can live in a bag without babying. Portable Hub SSD is the tiny block that turns a phone or camera into a serious capture and editing station. The Diamond Magnetic Portable SSD is the piece that lives on the back of an iPhone, turning storage into something closer to jewelry than IT gear.

Designer: DigiEra

OmniCore: AI NAS as a Private Studio Brain

The pain of hunting for assets across old drives and cloud accounts is real. OmniCore is DigiEra’s answer, a modular all-flash AI NAS designed to sit in a studio and quietly index everything. It supports up to 80 TB of SSD storage across eight 2.5-inch SATA bays and two M.2 slots, all hot-swappable, so the box can grow with a studio instead of being replaced every time a project spikes in size or a client asks for all the raw footage from three years ago.

OmniCore is not just a fast box of drives. A Rockchip RK3588 CPU, 16 GB of LPDDR5 RAM, and a 6 TOPS NPU let it run AI tasks locally, from automatic image tagging and semantic search to transcription, document analysis, conversational chat, and clip generation. That means a designer can type “blue packaging concept with foil logo” and have the NAS surface relevant shots, instead of scrolling through folders named final underscore final underscore v3.

The privacy-first angle matters here. OmniCore is designed to work fully offline, with no cloud dependency, which is important when client work, unreleased campaigns, or personal archives cannot leave the building. Dual LAN ports, including 2.5 GbE, and Wi-Fi 6 support let it serve multiple editors or designers at once without feeling like a bottleneck, and Docker support means it can host custom tools alongside its own AI engine for people who need more than a basic file server.

The physical experience is part of the design. The cube-like form factor with front-loading SSD modules makes storage feel tangible and approachable, more like a card catalog than a server rack. Drives slide in and out on small trays, so expanding from a few terabytes to tens of terabytes is a matter of minutes, not a weekend migration project where everything has to stop. For small studios, that kind of modularity is as much a design decision as a technical one.

Endura Portable SSD: Rugged Speed with a Material Story

Endura is the drive that lives in the camera bag and follows people to shoots. DigiEra bills it as the world’s first portable SSD with an aluminum–carbon-fiber shell, rated IP65 for water, dust, and shock resistance. That combination of materials gives it a technical, motorsport-like feel, while also signaling that it can handle being tossed into a backpack, clipped to a rig, or dropped on a sidewalk without needing a protective case wrapped around a protective case.

Under the shell, Endura uses USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 over USB-C, delivering up to 2,000 MB/s read and 1,800 MB/s write speeds in capacities from 512 GB to 4 TB. For photographers dumping RAW stills between locations or filmmakers backing up cards on set, that means less time watching progress bars and more time shooting, with a drive that looks like it belongs in a design-conscious kit and can survive the environments where most shoots actually happen.

Portable Hub SSD: One Block to Replace the Dongle Pile

The Portable Hub SSD is the antidote to the usual tangle of hubs, drives, and chargers. It wraps the same 20 Gbps SSD core in a compact aluminum block that also acts as a hub, combining high-speed storage, PD fast charging, and extra USB-C connectivity. Plug it into a phone, tablet, or laptop, and it becomes both a scratch disk and an expansion port, turning one cable into a complete mobile workstation.

The fold-out USB-C plug and side ports make it particularly friendly to iPhones and USB-C cameras. Instead of hanging a drive and a hub off a gimbal or handheld rig, one block adds space for ProRes or LOG footage and passes power through to keep the phone or camera alive. For designers who sketch on tablets or edit on ultraportables, it is the kind of object that quietly simplifies the everyday carry, handling data and power from a single point without adding bulk or visual noise.

Diamond Magnetic Portable SSD: Storage as Visible Accessory

The Diamond Magnetic Portable SSD is the piece that never leaves the phone. It snaps magnetically to the back of an iPhone 15 or 16 Pro and records 4K 60 FPS ProRes video directly to external storage, lifting the ceiling on how long you can shoot without cages, rigs, or bulky battery grips. For content creators who rely on their phone as a primary camera, that is a big shift in what is possible with a pocket-sized setup.

The diamond-encrusted, circular design makes the drive look closer to a compact mirror or piece of jewelry than a tech accessory. Underneath, it still runs USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 over USB-C at up to 2,000 MB/s read and 1,800 MB/s write, in capacities up to 4 TB. That mix of performance and visual polish means it can stay on the phone in a meeting, a shoot, or a café without feeling out of place, turning storage into something you actually want to show rather than hide in a pocket until needed.

DigiEra at CES 2026: Turning Storage into a Creative Toolkit

OmniCore anchors the studio as a private, AI-enabled brain that knows where every file lives and can answer questions in natural language. Endura and Portable Hub SSD handle the messy middle, moving data safely and quickly between cameras, phones, and laptops, with materials and form factors that feel deliberate rather than generic. The Diamond Magnetic SSD lives on the phone, turning storage into something you actually want to show. That is DigiEra’s real story at CES 2026: storage treated not as an afterthought or a cloud subscription, but as a set of designed objects that respect the way creative work actually moves through the day, from the pocket to the field to the desk and back.

The post DigiEra OmniCore at CES 2026: NAS That Searches Files Like ChatGPT first appeared on Yanko Design.

Build your own NAS Cloud Drive using a Raspberry Pi 4 and a 3D Printer

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Why pay for iCloud when you’ve got your own personal iCloud at home?!

Subscriptions will be the death of our civilization. Imagine not being able to ‘own’ something because a company only allows you to rent it. You don’t own the movies you pay for on Netflix, you don’t own the music you pay for on Spotify, and you can’t own storage on the cloud because even though you’re buying 500GB worth of space, you’re merely renting the space on a cloud server somewhere. This strange arrangement has led to the rise of personal NAS (Network-Attached Storage) devices, with people choosing to simply BUILD their own cloud storage devices instead of paying Apple, Google, or Microsoft for them. The advantages of a NAS are many – you don’t need to pay monthly fees, your cloud-drive is private to you so you don’t have to worry about Google or Apple getting hacked and your data getting leaked, but most importantly, you can store and access files on your NAS from anywhere. Use it to take phone or laptop backups, to store/watch videos, or even build your own music/movie streaming library as the ultimate cord-cutting move!

Designer: Frank Bernhardt

If you’re looking to buy a NAS, there are quite a few out there, but if you want to try building your own, DIY-maker Frank Bernhardt managed to put together one using a Raspberry Pi 4 module, a few extra components, and a 3D-printed enclosure. His entire process is up on Instructables for anyone to see and make, although you’ll definitely require some technical knowledge to get the software up and running.

Bernhardt’s NAS runs on a Pi4 module, connected to an SSD. The entire enclosure’s printed out of plastic, with metal inserts to screw the NAS together. Instead of simple status LEDs, Bernhardt even put a functional screen on the front that displays messages and the time of day when sitting idle.

One of the primary considerations in this project is the design of the enclosure. The enclosure needed to meet several specifications: it should allow access to the power and network connectors from the rear while keeping the USB connectors inside for a clean aesthetic. The use of melt-in brass threaded inserts ensured durability, and the compact size made it printable on a standard 200 x 200 mm 3D printer bed. The design avoids the common 90-degree offset for connectors typical in Raspberry Pi cases, streamlining cable management. Moreover, the enclosure does not require active cooling, reducing noise and making it suitable for SSDs.

Here are the materials and components used in the entire build:
Devices for computing and storage

  • Raspberry Pi 4 or 5 with power supply, 2GB RAM is sufficient
  • 32 GB micro SD card, SanDisk Extreme PRO recommended
  • One or two 2.5″ SATA hard disk drives, SSD recommended
  • One or two USB 3.0 to SATA adapter(s), Sabrent adapter(s) recommended

Software

  • Raspberry Pi Operating System Image (Pi OS Lite, 64-bit no desktop)
  • NAS Software for Raspberry Pi OS, openmediavault recommended

Component parts

  • 10 x M3 brass threaded inserts
  • 10 x M3x5 screws (4 more for the second hard disk drive)
  • 4 x M2.5 brass threaded inserts
  • 4 x M2,5×6 screws
  • 4 x M3x6 countersunk head screws
  • 1 x Keystone module RJ45 Cat 6
  • 1 x RJ45 Cat 6 patch cable (length or color doesn’t matter)
  • 1 x USB type C male connector plug to solder
  • 1 x USB type C female connector jack 2 pin with wire
  • 1 x SH1106 1.3″ OLED module I2C 128X64 4 pin
  • 1 x 4-pin cable with Dupont female connectors, either self-made or ready-made
  • Some PLA filament for your printer with the colors you prefer.

Printing the enclosure involved creating four main parts: the tray, device rack, side lid, and an optional stand. The tray required support structures for the connector openings and display window, which can be generated using slicing software. The rack holds the Raspberry Pi and hard drives, ensuring that the components are securely mounted. The assembly of the rack with the Raspberry Pi and hard drives necessitated precision, particularly when melting the brass threaded inserts using a soldering iron.

The next phase involved setting up the Raspberry Pi OS and configuring the network. Using the Raspberry Pi Imager, Bernhardt installed Raspberry Pi OS Lite (64-bit) onto a micro SD card. Essential settings such as hostname, username, password, and SSH enablement were configured during this process. Assigning a static IP address to the NAS ensured consistent network access, either through the Raspberry Pi OS, openmediavault, or a DHCP server, with a provision for regular patches and security updates

After the software setup, attention shifted back to hardware. The USB-C power connection and OLED display installation were critical steps. The USB-C socket was soldered inside the enclosure due to space constraints. The OLED display, used for status updates, was delicate and had to be installed without bending. Properly connecting the display to the GPIO pins of the Raspberry Pi was essential, ensuring to match the pin configurations correctly.

For the network connection, a keystone module simplified connectivity and future upgrades. By attaching a patch cable and keystone module inside the enclosure, the LAN port became easily accessible, accommodating both Raspberry Pi 4 and 5 models. This modular approach facilitates easy maintenance and upgrades, ensuring the longevity of the NAS setup.

Once the hardware assembly was complete, the OLED display software was installed. A Python script displays various system metrics on the OLED screen. The script runs at startup, continuously updating the display. Finally, the NAS software, openmediavault, was installed. This software provides a user-friendly web interface for managing the NAS, making it accessible and easy to configure. The installation was straightforward, and upon completion, the NAS was ready for use, with a commendable 500GB of storage.

Bernhardt’s Raspberry Pi NAS required a fair bit of technical expertise, but the process worked out MUCH cheaper than spending hundreds on a readymade NAS. If you’re looking for a nice summer project for yourself, you can build your own Raspberry Pi NAS too by following Bernhardt’s instructions here.

The post Build your own NAS Cloud Drive using a Raspberry Pi 4 and a 3D Printer first appeared on Yanko Design.