Raspberry Pi media center and NAS.
 

I got my Raspberry Pi and it is now up and running as a rudimentary NAS and media center.

I installed Xbian 1.0 Beta 1 which includes XBMC Frodo 12.2.

I get network access from a tiny Wi-Fi adaptor and have two seagate 1Tb HDD's connected to a 1 into 4 USB hub.

One HDD is set to mirror the other so this gives me some redundancy.

I have netatalk running on Xbian, and this is set up to share the contents of the main HDD over AFP. I can thus drag and drop files from my Mac over to the Pi NAS.

XBMC seem to work good. I don't get any slow down with 1080p. It's pretty cool having access to all your media like this, and I have a dedicated remote for it too. I think in theory I could stream stuff from youtube, etc., but my internet is so slow I won't bother with it ATM.

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Good work, I still need to pick one of these up.

I use Serviio, to cover my media streaming installed direct to my synology NAS, and a console i can access via my pc, but to be honest its drag and drop. the only downside is large Jpeg's they take ages to render.

The xbox on the other hand loves jpegs (streamed) , but hates non propriotry codecs or containers

I like XBMC, but its bit unwieldy for my liking, hate having to Plug a keyboard in to access it, and i havent figured out the remotes yet

That said if they tidy up the loose ends, as they will, they it has huge potential

All seem to excel at one area, but not everything... the package that does, will clean up

Mart

Can't you use the Xbox remote?

I was gonna just stream through my PS3 but this was a little expereiment to try XBMC on what is a cheap Linux box basically. XBMC is an ongoing open source project.

Havnt found the app yet to use the xbox remote.... how would this communicate with the pi?

would love to use the xbox remote

Mart

USB infra red dongle I think. You have to search the relevent website cos someone will have tried it already. I know Xbian supports the Xbox remote with the right dongle.

Looks like a fun project, but I don't get the point, and I get it even less every month. Most of my friends who were heavy pirates, don't pirate any more and all of my friends who have large media collections never watch them. Netflix and the like have taken over, just how much can you watch.

Anyhow, like the rainbow box, very Gay Pride.

I have thought this for ages

I suppose its the same reason I don't find it convenient to have a big CD collection; it is just easier if all media is uploaded or whatever.

I don't have a fast enough internet for netflix or lovefilm.

Cool little project.

How does the feed get to the screen - is it HDMI?

I tend to send everything over HDMI through my receiver. I've run Cat6 all round the house and have a cabinet under the stairs that will eventually hold 3TB in Raid 0 and 6TB in Raid 1 (4 drives in all - the raid 0 is for photos and stuff that can't be replaced. The Raid 1 drives (at least I think thats the right way round) will have all the kids DVDs and our DVDs and maybe the blurays depending on space. All my music is on google play which I can stream off internet and I want to get a Sonos player which I think will work with google play.

For me it will be easy for the kids to access their films rather than the usual destruction of DVDs from being scratched to heck.

However, since hooking up the sky box to the internet I haven't bought a bluray for ages. Was shocked to see them at £20+ in Tesco the other day.

I've been thinking of using a Pi but the 1080p playback put me off as some have said it struggles. Can it use a remote keyboard and mouse?

Fair enough, fast internet is key.

Yeah it is HDMI.

There are a few linux distros which run XBMC so playback quality can vary I think. I've not had any probs so far with Xbian. Yeah you can hook up a keyboard or mouse. Bluetooth stuff can be a hassle though. I use an Anker mini keyboard for controlling XBMC, but use SSH from my Mac for stuff within Xbian.

It's not mutually exclusive though. You can store all your own media in a NAS and run streaming from lovefilm or whatever.

That's my point though, everyone I know who collected DVD and Bluerays and who downloaded terabytes a week spent more time organising their own hardware and software for streaming than they did watching content. The cash for one terabyte hard drive equals a whole lot of rentals and a few decades of **** old movies on Netflix.

1tb HDD is £50 that's not even 9 months of Netflix, Christ you talk some crap sometimes.

Even if you add an external USB3.0 enclosure at @£25 you still only add 4 more months.

Change the number then, just make it bigger till you get the answer you want. People download terabytes a week.

A full on home server and all the required cabling etc is the good end of a grand which is a fair old time on any of the online streamers. However, its not about what is cheaper. Its the convenience of just flicking through the thumbnails and pressing play and its to keep the discs themselves from damage at the hands of the kids.

Its a good idea and I'd like to read/see more of the performance of the Pi in this situation.

Yeah it can get a little more expensive using a decent HTPC like mine but nowhere near a grand (homeplugs are the cheap way of connecting that up) and many terrabytes of NAS. I did susbcribe to Netflix at the same time as well, as it is great for catching up with old TV series.

Mine is almost exclusively for the convenience and protection of my collection. I do still have a massive collection on my HDD that I would have lost when my house was burgled in 2004 had I not had them all backed up.

I guess technically that is copyright infringement by keeping them, ironic that I should be put on the wrong side of the law by the burglary of my collection....

Hey, that makes me a pirate too. I have albums in iTunes that were stolen from my house, couldn't prove ownership at the time and definitely couldn't now. Well slap my parrot and kick my wooden leg, I'm a Pirate.

Doesn't make you a pirate, makes you appear to be one, just fancy dress maybe? ;)

That's a shame, I'll put my halo back on.

That is quite a lot of money?!

Many people have things like Playstations or Xboxs and you can use these as your media centers. In addition, it is sensible anyway to have some sort of NAS in your house to backup or store your files, otherwise you are reliant on cloud storage...or worse, your laptop (on its own or with ad hoc expansion HDD's).

A NAS is really cheap to build with a raspberry pi, you don't have to spend thousands unless you have some extraordinary requirements IMHO.

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Didn't spend anything like a grand on mine, NAS is connected directly to my router which can also take a USB drive and use it as a NAS, XBMC on the HTPC runs a dual core 2.2ghz Intel cpu on an Asus P5 motherboard with Onboard Graphics, Blu-ray drive and uses old components from a PC I upgraded for the rest in a Silverstone Case with media remote. Using 200mbps homeplugs to connect around the house.

Raspberry Pi does make an excellent alternative and takes up far less space, but I did also use to do a lot of surfing/netflix and a bit of gaming as well and it wasn't available when I built it in 2007 :)

Very interested too by the Pi performance. I'm slightly tempted to get one to replace my AppleTV 1st gen. It's currently running openelec and XBMC 12.1 (I will be updating it to the latest sometime this week) and it's not too bad, works ok, but need to check how the 1080p files I have play on it.

The living room has an AppleTV 3rd Gen, which until I got netflix wasn't used for that much. I now have PlexConnect setup, so I can access my media library that I access from the ATV1, and whatever other device I fancy pointing at the media server (Currently Plex Media Server running on my iMac, and the aforementioned PlexConnect script is running there too).

I have to say that PlexConnect has pretty much saved the AppleTV, as I was seriously considering selling it and getting a Pi or similar, as I wanted control over the media I already have, ie; not having to re-encode / re-rip things to m4v format, and not have to add them to iTunes.

I'm still tempted by the Pi, I could get another AppleTV 3rd gen, but I'm going to wait and see what is coming down the pipeline, there might be some news when the refresh of the iOS devices happens in a few months.

i'm tempted too , i want to know how it handles 1080p also bluray iso files

a grand !?

what you running for that edd?

Well I recently bought a 9u cabinet, 305m Cat6 cable, 24 port switch, 24 port patch panel and all the wall sockets and modules. I've used 18 of the ports and when the garage is converted I'll probably put another 3 in there.

In the living room I've chased a 4 socket cat6 panel into the wall which feeds the Sky box, HTPC and network receiver and I also run telephone over the cat6 which also goes into the Sky box. If I get a Smart TV for the living room I may move the network cable from the receiver to the TV. The TV in the kitchen is smart so can find my PC and play content from my PC. I'm using my PC in the dining room until I build the server for the cabinet.

All that has cost over £300.

As the server will be in the cabinet I need a rack mount case rather than just an off the shelf mini server or NAS. Only thing with a NAS is that 4 bay boxes are expensive plus you have to buy the drives on top. Least with the rack server case I can get upto 6 drives in there plus I can upgrade a bit at a time over the years. 3TB drives are £100 each and I want to have two in Raid 0 which will have all the photos and other stuff that needs redundancy and another 2 drives in Raid 1 so will look like one drive of 6TB for DVDs and Blurays. As I have the discs I have backups.

The server will be under £300 for components but the drives will be £400 alone. Although I'll be buying the drives in pairs so can spread the cost. I can manage without the server for a while so again I can spread the cost and just buy parts when I can.

What I do need though is something to stream to. I want something that can just stream content for the kids rooms and not be too complicated to use. The living room needs the ability to access the internet and so the main bedroom but I don't want anything that is a fiddle or needs coaxing everytime it is required.

Using OpenElec on Raspberry Pi but haven't tried USB DAC yet so wouldn't have to leave TV on (no HDMI receiver). Was using it with XBMC for AirPlay and XBMCremote. An x86 laptop does run XBMC oodles better though and I now use that even though I have a Samsung smart TV. I didn't find that the Pi handled video well, maybe I needed codecs but haven't gone further into it.

I have just strung Cat 6 in three directions from where the BT master socket is. Wireless routers are on the end, and a daisy chain through one of them gets from new garage to wife's workshop. Don't think I could have pulled through wires for everything to one panel.

Try the latest Xbian, it's supposed to run XBMC faster. Make sure your SD card is class 10 or whatever too.