A real microcomputer from The Raspberry Pi Foundation

Toble

Well-Known Forumite
Definitely want XBMC in my life now. Toble - do you find RaspBMC slow on the Pi or does it work ok? Do you run RaspBMC from SD card or usb?

I find it works fine unless its been up for a month or so, they it slows down. I run it from the SD card, with a bunch of USB drives hangin off it for the media.
 

My Name is URL

Well-Known Forumite
I find it works fine unless its been up for a month or so, they it slows down. I run it from the SD card, with a bunch of USB drives hangin off it for the media.

Presumably a quick power down and back up solves that...? Seriously thinking of getting one now.
 

Toble

Well-Known Forumite
Presumably a quick power down and back up solves that...? Seriously thinking of getting one now.

Yeah, a reboot fixess it. There seems to be an issue with some AVI codecs giving sound only, but I've only had this problem with one episode of The Tick and fixed it by running a converter over it..
 

SharkBait

Member (lol "member")
My favourite flavour of XBMC for the Pi is OpenElec. I have had issues with the other two popular XBMC distributions. It just works. I paid for the license keys to enable hardware rendering of video formats and it plays HD content quite smoothly via Ethernet.
 

My Name is URL

Well-Known Forumite
Huh? Additional costs.... didn't know about this.

Can you provide more detail please afasoas? How much and would I need to buy them to play videos on XBMC software on a Pi?
 

SharkBait

Member (lol "member")
Costs: I think I bought two different licenses, set me back less than a fiver.
Detail: You don't need the licenses. But they help in terms of getting smooth HD video play back. The licenses enable graphics hardware accelerated video playback, which is faster than software video play back (GPU versus CPU load). The broadcom "system on a chip" that the RasbPi uses is not open hardware, hence the licensing requirement. A quick Google should provide all the information you need.
 

Toble

Well-Known Forumite
I've never bothered with paying extra for the codecs. Almost everything I've downloaded, erm sorry legally acquired, has run fine and smooth and crystal clear. (Except that one episode of The Tick, obviously).
 

cometcycle

Well-Known Forumite
Really need to unbox my Pi and get RaspBMC up and running.

What if any S/W do you use for ripping tracks from CD? I've tended to use Asunder (under Ubuntu) to put direct onto my MP3 player but notice a lack of cover art.
 

Rikki

Well-Known Forumite
Were hopefully going to be ordering a http://www.dub-box.com/ very soon and I'm thinking of installing a Pi in it to play music and videos/movies off. I'm thinking of connecting it all up to the 12v leisure circuit with a 12v to 5v converter for the Pi and then getting a 12v/240v TV to act as a monitor and most probably some type of car speakers built in somehow. As we plan to be on sites with a hook up most of the time I'm not too worried about power consumption but would like the whole thing to be run off the leisure battery if needed. The Pi itself would probably get hidden away somewhere and I would get surface mounted USB ports that we could plug a stick into for transferring or just reading data off, already have a spare wireless keyboard and mouse that I'm hoping to use. Also plan to get a wireless USB adapter as alot of sites have it set up and would be good to have internet if wanted.

Does this all sound feasible to those of you with more experience of these things? Or is there a simpler way of doing what I want?
 

Toble

Well-Known Forumite
It sounds eminently feasible.
You'd need a powered USB hub hidden behind the surface mounted usb ports, but thats trivial.
One set up i looked at at for a narrowboat project just had the Pi powered from a standard charger plug taken on the 12dc->240ac inverter, but running it off the 12dc would mean it could be "up" all the time.

WiFi might be a problem being inside a metal box, and there could be range issues. Can you still get wifi dongles with external aerials?
A 3G dongle might be a wise consideration too. Or just one of those portable hotspot things.

OS-wise, I'm thinking RaspBMC maybe, as thats what I use and for what you want it seems ideal.

One more bit of advice... don't tow your Dub Box behind a VW camper. I once saw a home made T25 trailer that that been towed behind a T25 utterly destroyed on the M6, as the pensioner overtaking then (yeah unusual) got confused and tried to get between them. It was messy.
 

Rikki

Well-Known Forumite
Seen that you need powered hubs, would just extend cables from it to surface ones .
WiFi signal maybe an issue, shell is all fiber glass but has a steel frame hadn't thought of that . Will look into external aerials.
Think I might just buy one and start building it all in a wooden box or something for now powered from a car battery so I can hopefully just transfer it across, will also give me time to work out any problems i might have before hand.

Going to be towing it with my T5 but they will be color matched. Hopefully we won't ever encounter that type of problem.
 

Toble

Well-Known Forumite
Another thought... I'm not sure if the latest software updates have improved, but the used to be a pain in the arse to get working with a lot of wireless keyboards. If you have problems, go for one thats known to work.

Of course there is a hack to use normal remote controls too, but i've no idea about that as its on my lengthy TO-DO list.

And invest in *lots* of high quality usb sticks! I've been finding them a lot more convenient than USB drive enclosures, mainly due to not having to faff about with power supplies.

The one thing the Pi lacks is holes in the PCB to put a bolt through, so getting a clip-on case to house it, and then bolting that to something is a good idea.

And (oh god, i'm on a roll here!) put it somewhere easily accessible, as RaspBMC likes to do its updates down the ethernet cable, and taking the console apart to get at it will get on your nerves. Or just run a patch cable to a surface mounted socket and have an extra long patch cable that you can thread to your home router... or buy a second Pi that is wired in at home just for updating the SD card. But beware of taking the SD card in and out too much, as the card slot is a bit fragile.

And finally... at the risk of overegging the pudding, add Bluetooth support (I'm working on a BT based file server to copy files from/to phones). And if you really want to go mental, a CD/DVD drive (but, power supply faffing again), and you could probably hack it to control the internal lights and an LED text readout displayed in the back window (for whatever reason).

Anyway, I think we all expect photos when its all done! And a write-up!
 

Rikki

Well-Known Forumite
Cheers lots to think about from that. Was thinking about a dvd drive but not sure on the power supply side of it, could probably use an old psu which I think have a 5v output which could be used maybe for the pi when on hookup. Could maybe set up a relay to auto switch somehow depending on if were plugged in or not. But don't think that wouldn't work if I wanted it all to run off the battery.

The more I think about it the more complicated its becoming. I'm going to start drawing out a wiring diagram of it all I think
 
Top