Luís Armando Bianchin

Raspberry Pi Media Center

13 April 2014

Raspberry Pi as a Media Center

In 2013, I bought a Raspberry Pi with the goal of using it as a media center. I also bought other accessories, the full list is the following:

The USB HUB I have is also used as power source for the RP. You can see in the image below how things are connected:

My Raspberry Pi Raspberry Pi Setup: USB Hub, Hidden Raspberry Pi and HD

For software I am using the distro Raspbmc. It is based on Raspibian, a debian distro for Raspberry Pi. So it comes with apt and you can download packages from debian repositories. Raspbmc includes XBMC, which is a cool interface for using it as a media center. Also there are some nice services such as samba, FTP, SSH and SFTP.

Wifi

I have struggle a bit to configure the wifi. So, I am providing below the links I've used as a resource:

Also here it is my /etc/network/interfaces configuration file. Note that I am using static IP address.

iface lo inet loopback #localhost config

auto eth0 #ethernet config
iface eth0 inet static
    address 192.168.2.3
    netmask 255.255.255.0
    gateway 192.168.2.1 #use this IP in the PC when connecting

allow-hotplug wlan0
iface wlan0 inet static #wi-fi config
    wpa-ssid wirelessname #place your wifi ssid
    wpa-psk wirelesspassword #place your password
    address 192.168.1.100
    netmask 255.255.255.0
    gateway 192.168.1.1

iface default inet dhcp

Backup

It is possible to backup the entire SD card. Plug the SD card in your Linux or OSX and run the following command:

dd if=/dev/sdx of=/path/to/image bs=1M

Where /dev/sdx is the SD card device point.

Other tips

Some other details of my configuration:

  • I have a 16 GB SD card, but 8 GB would also be fine.
  • Media files are stored in the external hard drive.
  • XBMC has a subtitles plugin, so you can easily download subtiles for the video you are watching.
  • Use the app Yatse in android to control XBMC. It is not just a remote control, you can navigate through your library in it.
  • Use ramlog to make SD card last longer.
  • Stream from XBMC, trough Android, to a Chromecast, by using Yatse or BubbleUPnP.
  • The hard drive I use stops spinning if it is not used for a while.

Other ideas

Here are some ideas that I have, but did not tried yet:

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