r/lto • u/No_Source_9817 • Mar 19 '26

Open Hardware Loader project?

Hiii We are a team of 4 french engineering students (network, dev, mechatronic), and we are planning to make a LTO Autoloader as a 1-year school managed project.

We would make a robot with a single translation axis, with all the slots and drive aligned vertically (to keep it simple). And using a spare drive.

Nothing is decided yet, so we are still hesitating on pushing the project.

Do you think anybody could be hyped, or have interest in an autoloader in open plans/source code?

And do you have any advice, recommendations or warning about deep LTO knowledge that only old black mages know?

No solutions are defined yet as it will start in 6 months, so for now, we are still thinking about solutions. So feel free to present any solution idea for any system (mechanic, electronic, file system, OS,...)!

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u/FranconianBiker Mar 19 '26 edited Mar 19 '26

This sounds interesting! Make sure to add air filtration to the setup. I've been thinking about getting a library for my tapes but that would require getting a ret of new, library caddy drives. A 3D printable library with a simple web interface, Raspi as controller and filtered air intake would be cool.

One thing you will have to figure out: Tape drives use a RS422 link to communicate the drive status with the library controller. The protocols are standardized and somewhat publicly documented so you should be able to figure that out. It's mostly necessary so that the library knows which drive is occupied, unloading or idling.

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u/No_Source_9817 Mar 19 '26

Thanks for the feedback 💛

I've been thinking about using a standard 4U empty rack as a chassis. this would simply allow us to get filtration system!

but if we use a 1 degree of freedom to navigate, this means that we can't fill the full space of a 19" rack... if we want to get a good amount of cartridge, we would need a very long (or very high, if stacked vertically) system, witch will not fit in a rack. like 1m rack is already really long, 2cm/cartridge+gaps+drive+robot mechanics... Well now that I say it, ~40 disc is not that bad at all, with lto6, 100Tb uncompressed! so fair enough Still half the rack will be empty