Just finished building an awesome Raspberry Pi media center

Forums › Home Theatre (including HTPC and EPG Collector) › Just finished building an awesome Raspberry Pi media center - an interest?

bener

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#108635 3-Sep-2012 13:27

I'm thinking about making a few more of these [ALBUM]

Raspberry Pi Media Center

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Vocus

#680826 3-Sep-2012 13:32

Looks good! What hardware do you have in there aside from the Rasp Pi?

timmmay

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#680832 3-Sep-2012 13:39

Definitely interested. I have a PS3 purely for playing video from a network share via hdmi, I don't play games or anything. I'd love to sell it and replace it with a cheap unit that does the same job.

xarqi

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#680835 3-Sep-2012 13:50

My RPis are about a week away. I'll load up one with XMBC of some sort and drive it with my android phone. The other I'm going to set up as a NAS to serve my 10 TB of media files.

That's the plan, anyway.

Which route did you take to XBMC?

xarqi

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#680838 3-Sep-2012 13:53

ubergeeknz: Looks good! What hardware do you have in there aside from the Rasp Pi?

I doubt if there is any (aside from an SDHC card). The Rpi does the lot!

bener

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#680845 3-Sep-2012 14:05

The only hardware in the case is a Raspberry Pi running RaspMC [Debian-based XBMC install built for Raspberry Pi] - it has native hardware decoding, with included h264 codecs, HDMI out (it's even working with the remote over HDMI on my Samsung plasma telly) and MPEG-2 with license (about $5).

More specifically, "Broadcom VideoCore IV,[61] OpenGL ES 2.0, MPEG-2 & VC-1 (with license), 1080p30 h.264/MPEG-4 AVC high-profile decoder and encoder"

I have a wireless KBD and mouse attached, but the mouse is pretty surplus to requirements with XBMC.
Everything worked straight away without extra config - e.g. the box going to sleep turns the TV onto standby, keyboard input brings it back up again, remote works to control. This will obviously vary based on what TV you have, but all peripherals worked right away, as did all playback. Display optimization was very easy.

It is playing back all my HD media over USB without a hitch(using a USB hub as Raspberry Pi runs off a standard Micro USB charger which does not supply enough voltage for USB powered peripherals). Have not tested over ethernet yet - I only just got it going. I will be testing more this week, so will keep an eye on this thread and update as I do more testing.

Youtube/Vimeo streams better/smoother than my PC, but the XBMC plugins for these sites are pretty slow to browse - e.g. loading your favourites or search results. RaspMC is auto updating too, so it will just keep getting better.

Let me know if you want more spefics. I am looking at supplying these as a ready-to-go setup, with RasbMC pre-installed. I also want to tweak for optimum performance and have this preset- hence the need for more testing.

bener

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#680848 3-Sep-2012 14:08

Xarki, you are correct, just the Pi inside - great little unit!

As for your questions about XBMC, I just used the RaspMC stardard install, it was very easy to set up, pretty much all automated.

timmmay

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#680851 3-Sep-2012 14:10

Interested in your network experiments, and also file compatibility with mkv, mp4, avi. I'd love to use my Logitech Harmony One as well.

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tonyhughes

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#680854 3-Sep-2012 14:16

bener: I am looking at supplying these as a ready-to-go setup, with RasbMC pre-installed.

Approx price?

Keen as.

xpd

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#680858 3-Sep-2012 14:30

Ditto, something like this for my folks would be great.

Gavin / xpd / FastRaccoon / Geek of Coastguard New Zealand

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bener

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#680862 3-Sep-2012 14:42

Hey thanks for all the interest - I will be working out a price and an optimum setup asap - and will update over this week. I just want to make sure things are all working as they should.

I know you are all an industrious bunch and might prefer to make your own - I reckon I could make up the record sleeve cases for about $25 and it would still be worth my time... I have a whole bunch of vinyl that I can't play (poor condition) and the record sleeves are pretty awesome for cases.
Fit is very snug with the Raspberry Pi, heat output is almost nil over the last two days - very cool to the touch.

bener

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#680863 3-Sep-2012 14:43

Timmay - I will experiment with different file formats and let you know too.

xarqi

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#680866 3-Sep-2012 14:49

How are you doing the wireless KB/mouse? USB bluetooth adaptor?

bener

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#680868 3-Sep-2012 14:52

Standard Logitech wireless kb/mouse combo with USB dongle plugged directly into Raspberry Pi. Worked out-of-box, no setup required. I would assume this to be the case with most standard USB kb/mouse combos.

I was thinking of packaging it with a keyboard that includes a touchpad, but the mouse is kind of redundant on XBMC, I use arrows, enter, backspace.

Kiwipixter

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#680870 3-Sep-2012 14:53

bener: .. I am looking at supplying these as a ready-to-go setup, with RasbMC pre-installed. I also want to tweak for optimum performance and have this preset- hence the need for more testing.

If it comes with a case and include a working wifi-N stick, and price less than an Apple TV, i'd definitely be interested.

stevenz

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#680871 3-Sep-2012 14:54

Have they got enough juice to decode a 720p h.264 MKV + AC3?

@KnightNZ

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