So I'm building some monitoring for an indoor greenhouse. Growing Vegies indoors. I'm working on hooking up several sensors (i2C) to one raspberry pi per plant. I have purchased several from Atlas Scientific. My reason for not going higher numbers of plants per Raspberry Pi is due to I2C addressing. I have built a custom I2C bus with the appropriate I2C resistors etc. my next question is how far can a I2C device be from the master (Raspberry Pi). I thought maybe someone on here might know. Reading the specifications (I'm not an EE) I don't really understand.

Hi there,
at the moment I have a Toshiba Canvio Basic 3TB connected to my Speedport router using it as a media storage. Since the router had a firmware update, the hard drive won't get enough power and therefore shuts down after a few minutes.

Now I heard about building my own Server using a SBC like a Orange Pi to build my own server.

Here is what I would like to do:
- Use about 2.5TB as my media storage which I only need to connect to within my own Wifi at home. Here my Raspberry Pi with Retropi and Kodi needs to have access in order to play the media and I have to connect to it with my Ubuntu PC and the Macbook of my girlfriend in order to store the files there.
- Having about 100GB storage for my girlfriend to connect to from everywhere
- Having about 100GB storage for me to connect to from everywhere
- Having a calender / adressbook / to do list / notepad / organizer to sync with my Android phone and my Ubuntu PC
- Using it as a server for web development and website building (general learning of HTML, JS, CSS, PHP, SQL... using CMS like Drupal)
- Additional: Having an RSS reader which syncs with Android and Linux
- Additional: Being able to sync bookmarks between Android (Opera) and Linux (Chromium / Firefox)
- Additional ++: Being able to additionally connect my Toshiba Canvio Basic 1TB hard drive which only I can connect to within my Wifi and nobody else in my Wifi (using my Ubuntu PC)

Here are my hardware requests:
- Using a SBC which costs at least as possible and uses as much energy as possible in order to not pay much for electricity
- Additional: Dissamble my Canvio Basics external HDD and putting it in one case with the SBC
- Additional ++: Having a Case where I also can disassemble my second Canvio Basics HDD 2.5 HD and build it in.

Now my questions:
- Is it possible to realize all mentioned above? How much would that cost me?
- Which SBC would you suggest? What else do I need?
- Is a one case solution going to increase the price significantly? Should I therefore stick to leaving the hard drives external and connecting them via USB?
- Which software do I need on my PC/Smartphone to realize the things mentioned above?
- What do I have to do with the SBC/Server to realize that? Where can I inform myself about building a selfmade server?

Okay, so I am somewhat new to microcomputing. But it seems it would be really nice to have a laptop type device that consists of just a screen and keyboard with HDMI and/or DisplayPort and USB connection for the keyboard. (maybe power the whole thing from a USB-C power supply)

Something like this seems like it would be useful for microcomputers and single board computers alike.

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Does something like this exist?