Streaming media services are a huge step up from what we had to deal with in the past when we wanted to watch a new movie. This is not to say that strolling down the aisles of a Blockbuster on Friday night was no fun, but having many thousands of movies and TV shows always available at the click of a button is a major convenience. But of course there is also a downside to streaming — without an internet connection, all of that media goes “poof.”
Jackson Studner, a student of mechanical engineering, came up with a very cool little device that offers up many of the benefits of a traditional streaming service, but without requiring an internet connection or subscription fees. Called the Nomad, Studner’s device can store hundreds of gigabytes of audio and video files locally. It then serves those files up to virtually any Wi-Fi-connected device with a web browser (e.g. a phone, tablet, or smart TV). And at about the size of an old-school thumb drive, the Nomad can even come along with you on vacations.
The device is plugged into a power bank (📷: Jackson Studner)
The device is powered by a Waveshare ESP32-S3 development board with a 1.47-inch LCD display and, well, that is about all there is to it on the hardware side, really. Of course you will need to slide in an SD card with your media on it as well, and it needs to be plugged into a USB port for power. The LCD display is used for showing SD card usage, an active connections list, the Wi‑Fi SSID, and other status information. An optional 3D-printed case makes the Nomad feel more like a finished product.
Once it is plugged into a USB port or power bank, the Nomad creates a local Wi-Fi hotspot that any nearby devices can connect to. From there, they can access a browser-based user interface developed by Studner. This allows users to browse through their movies and music and play them right in the same interface.
If you have multiple people in your household that want to stream content, the Nomad can support as many as eight concurrent users, but that is at a 480p resolution level. At full HD resolution, you can expect two or three simultaneous streams to perform well.
As Studner points out, the Nomad is still a work in progress. There are some known issues yet to be fixed, and a number of planned upgrades to the user interface and the choice of available media players. If you do not mind a few rough edges, orders are now being taken. The first batch of devices is expected to ship in mid-September of this year.
