Raspberry Pi

[Tinlad]

\o/

Glad you've got it up and running! Mine is now a key fixture in my tellybocks setup. It pulls content from an old laptop HDD hooked up to my router, and I control it with my Harmony remote via HDMI-CEC on my Samsung TV. Completely seamless. I also use it for iPlayer, as it seems to be much more reliable (and pulls in a higher quality stream) than the client built in to my FreeSat box. Pretty awesome for a £25 circuit board.

My next step is probably the same as yours: to spend a bit of money on a proper NAS. I'm looking at getting a 2-bay Synology unit and using it as a media store, Time Machine backup target and torrenting box.

[Ekona]

I've just tried the Airplay on mine, and having proved that it works I can now get rid of the AirPort I've had sat underneath the TV and use this instead. It's not quite as user-friendly for Jo, but then I use it more than she does anyway for music streaming.

I turned my HDMI-CEC off as it was confusing the TV and the AVR for some reason: The TV kept wanting to change HDMI inputs when the AVR is only plugged into the one HDMI socket, which was odd. It now functions like everything else via the AVR though, which is a preferable solution for me. I've managed to get the TestNAS running (via UnRAID) and it seems to be very good, I am having issues running stuff but I think it's to do with the codecs and the MPEG2 licencing issues: I've purchased the keys and once they get here I should be fine. It's only that some test stuff seems to run audio-only, so that should sort that.

Trying to decide on what kind of NAS setup to go for now, whether to stick with UnRAID which is cheaper, more expandable but ultimately slower in usage and a pain when you want to add stuff, or go the QNap/ReadyNAS route which has less options for expanding but it the far slicker method.

[Ekona]

Playback sorted, was just the codec licences. Also found it streams a high bit rate BD rip almost flawlessly over 100mb connection with just the odd buffering every 5 mins or so, but an upgrade to gigabit stuff will sort that.

I reckon I can get a basic box put together for about £150 minus drives and run UnRAID on it, should be sufficient for my needs. Onwards and upwards with this, I think!

[Tinlad]

I reckon I can get a basic box put together for about £150 minus drives and run UnRAID on it, should be sufficient for my needs. Onwards and upwards with this, I think!

Indeed, I've changed my mind about getting a Synology and have instead bought an ASUS C60M1-I motherboard. It's got a 1 GHz dual-core AMD Fusion CPU with a TDP of only 9 W, so it's passively (therefore silently) cooled. Support for up to 16 GB of RAM (spec. says 8 GB, but 16 has been confirmed to work), and it has six SATA 6 Gbps ports onboard. Price: £60!

At the moment I don't need tons of storage, so I've bought a tiny case with an external power brick that'll take a couple of 2.5" drives. I'm going to install Windows Server 2008 R2 (I got it free when I was a student) on my old SSD and put in spare laptop HDD for storage.

In the future I'll get a bigger case, stuff it with HDDs (Western Digital Red drives look like they're the bee's knees) and install UnRAID or FreeNAS.

But for now:

ASUS C60M1-I: £60
Case + PSU: £45
8 GB RAM: £30
=
£135

Bargain!

[Ekona]

Oh that's just daft money, great spot! I know it's a mini-ITX, but would it fit inside a normal tower case?

[Tinlad]

Should do, yes. I'm pretty sure it just uses a subset of the ATX mounting holes.

You can get some very nifty Mini-ITX cases specially designed for NAS applications though, that are very compact and yet capable of holding a whole lotta disks. For example: Fractal Design's Array R2 that takes six 3.5" drives and one 2.5" SSD.

[Ekona]

That is pretty tasty, I have to admit. I've already got a mahoosive case here from my last PC that I can reuse, but only if the PSU I've got (or at least, I think I've still got) will work. I need to get up in the loft tonight and have a look, but that one you've linked to does come with the PSU so looks a good choice.

[Tinlad]

XBMC 12.0 has now been released, and Raspbmc should incorporate the release version on the 3rd of February.

Amazing work by the team that's brought it to the RPi.

[Ekona]

Excellent stuff, I should have all my BDs ripped by then so I might leave updating the library until Frodo is out, then do a clean install. I have no idea if XBMC can do updates automatically.

[Tinlad]

Raspbmc can do automatic updates, but only up to a point; if the root filesystem needs updating it means a re-install. Yzou can backup/restore the library though, so it's not a huge deal.

I intend to do a clean install/library rebuild regardless, just so it's all fresh like.

[Ekona]

Yeah, I figured as much. I wonder if the library files are accessible via Win7, or if I need to learn more Linux stuff and copy it over that way? No hassle either way, I could do with learning a bit more so I feel more comfortable using it.

It's scary just how quickly you (I) forget all that DOS code we used to use years ago in the era of Win3.1, when everything needed fiddling like that. I've not had to change a directory at the command line in any OS for years.

[Tinlad]

By default, Raspbmc has an FTP server enabled that allows you to access the files on the SD card remotely.

Just grab a free FTP client and point it at your Pi's IP and log in using the user/pass (pi/raspberry by default). Then you can transfer stuff back and forth as easy as... pi. Ha!

There's defo the opportunity for more geek points, because the best way to backup your library is to SSH into the Pi (PuTTY can do this) and create a tar archive of the files from the Linux command line and then copy the archive off using something like FTP.

There are instructions somewhere on how to do this... I'd find them for you, but I'm on flaky Hungarian hotel WiFi and and not sure it's up to it.

[Ekona]

No probs, I'll have a hunt for them. Cheers for the tips

[Dan]

Just upgraded my B to a 2, and installed OSMC on it.

The navigation through menus is a bit smoother, and it scans the media library much faster, but the playback is basically identical. Where it is a big upgrade is copying over the network: gets ~10MBps, as opposed to ~3 on the old one.

Definitely worth the £30.

[Ekona]

Nice one

I may consider grabbing some of these with an audio piggyback board to use for music streaming around the new house. I just wish they'd put gig Ethernet on them!