Building a SD Card Duplicator

We have built, or rather wrote scripts to do build USB duplicators. An SD is actually very similar. If you are thinking about to building one we can share our experience and maybe you can help us build an SD one....

We had a similar requirement for a project where we needed to be able to write images to 10+ Raspberry Pi SD cards on a daily basis. We looked at the various Card Duplicator's available to buy but found most of them won't successfully make a bootable SD card, as most only copy files directly and not the bootable information, they are also ridiculously expensive!

So as a solution we wrote our own simple web-based software to run on a single Raspberry Pi connected to 2 x 7-port Belkin powered USB hubs (The Pi has a limitation of 2 hubs, and a maximum of 14 USB ports).

We've now released this as Open Source software to help others who have the same requirement. Currently just the source code is available but we will also be uploading an image file based on Arch Linux ARM running Nginx + php

http://www.rockandscissor.com/projects/osid

Matthew curious if that system you set up was still available...

We have a project where we have to configure 1200 RPI exactly the same... looking for solutions to help speed the process up!

We are still actively working on this project whenever we get a chance in between working on projects for our clients. I'm pleased to report that we will be shortly making an image available of OSID, keep an eye out on our project page at http://rockandscissor.com/projects/osid (you can sign up for email updates on the project as well).

OSID is ideal for duplicating multiple cards at the same time. At the moment I understand the Raspberry Pi has a limit of 14 usb ports across 2 hubs but I'd imagine this should save you a significant amount of time duplicating, and you could always run the duplication across multiple Pi's.

Any update on availability of the images? Also is it relatively easy to configure for hubs with a different number of usb or sd card ports? I am planning to assemble a duplication unit to make 2-4 copies at a time. My RPi stacks have 4 machines. A bit smaller scale, but the duplicator will still save a lot of time.

Is this project still alive, it's just what I was looking for.

build a robot than can plug and unplug SD cards and just leave it chewing on a stack of media.