Hello @jatindavey ,
Welcome to the forum!
Almost any hardware is suitable to run storagenode - it’s not used so much when our customers uses the network. We have nodes even on router: Running node on OpenWRT router?
The recommended hardware requirements you can see there: Prerequisites - Node Operator
The setup instruction for Raspberry you can read there: Install storagenode on Raspberry Pi3 or higher – Storj
Unlike mining there is no predictable income or constant traffic, any customers’ behavior is normal.
Just make sure that you do not use a SMR HDDs, they proven to be slow and problematic: PSA: Beware of HDD manufacturers submarining SMR technology in HDD's without any public mention
All terms regarding traffic flow in our documentation and software is from the customers’ point of view - upload to the network is an ingress to your node, download from the network is an egress from your node.
By default our software uses ISO for measure items, i.e. TB it’s a Terabyte in base of 10 (unlike TiB which is base of 2).
Each new storagenode must be vetted, while in vetting it can receive only 5% of customers’ traffic until got vetted. To be vetted on one satellite the node should pass 100 audits from the satellite. For the one node it should take at least a month.
You can expand you storage later by either replacing a disk to the larger disk and migrate all data to it or adding a new node. All nodes behind the same /24 subnet of public IPs are treated as a one node for uploads (ingress), and as a separate ones for egress traffic and audits.
You will be paid $1.5/TB of used space, $20/TB for egress traffic to the customers, $10/TB for egress audit and repair traffic. The ingress is not paid, because you paid for storage.