So I had been hearing about the Pi for some time before I finally decided to get one myself. I really couldn’t come up with what to do with it and now I have 2 Raspberry Pi’s and a plan to get at least 2 more in the future.
For those of you who are not aware of what the Raspberry Pi is it is a small credit card sized computer based on the ARM CPU with half a gig of RAM (model B) 2 USB ports an SD card slot and Ethernet (also model B). Now you’re probably going “What’s ARM?” sigh, any tiny gadget you have, be it a cell phone, tablet, Ouya are based off it. It is a low cost lower power (as in electricity not computing) architecture which is taking us all by storm!!! (and you didn’t even know it did you?)
Anyways back to topic, So I was looking at these and what people were doing with them and it just wasn’t striking a cord with me. The I came across Raspbmc, a Pi linux OS geared towards being the best XBMC a Pi could be. The software you will almost always find running a Pi is linux and to be more specific a Debian Linux offshoot “Raspbian” and that is the same case with Raspbmc. Raspbmc is a tailored Raspbian that is easy to set up and run as a media server immediately after install.
The reason this got my attention is because at my trailer the stereo system went last season and to replace it is a couple hundred bucks. With the Pi i could do it for less than $100 so I was off to work on my project! The first step of this is to of course order a PI.
The place I decided to go with was Newark/Element 14. Mainly because they come up first when you search for where to get one and secondly because they had distribution centers EVERYWHERE so I figured shipment wouldn’t be too terrible. When I went to order it said the backlog was 10k units and it would be a month so based off that I went to Deal extreme for all my cables.
Low and behold a week later my Pi arrives well before the month timeline so I am stuck with a cute little PCB and nothing to do with the damn thing.
Eventually the cables arrived and I could play around with the Pi. Installing Raspbmc was a breeze, there are automatic tools on all the main Operating Systems you can get that will do all the imaging for or if you are a man you can go to the CLI and use DD to directly image your card (Except Windows, where you can’t be a man without 3rd party modification).
Raspbmc has a minimal installer that downloads everything and asks you 100 pesky installer like questions OR you can download the standalone version and it skips all that and immediately give you a bootable OS (good if you are using Ethernet as your main connection). The first time I installed Rasbmc I did it the way they recommend but I have done the stand alone image since then as it is faster and less hassle. All you need to do with the standalone is select “update now” from the Rasbmc Program within XBMC’s “Programs” and then your standalone version is as up to date as the regular without the 100 questions.
Some things to note about the Pi as a media server is that it works best (s/best/at all/) with open standards like xvid, mp4. if you have DVD rips or DVD’s to play you need to pay a small fee for the codec from the Raspberry Pi Foundation.
Storage
I initially had a patriot brand SD card backing my Pi but after several corruptions and it finally refusing to be a bootable disk I have left that brand behind. I now use Lexar brand and I noticed the OS performance improved but everyones experience may be different with different brands.
External Storage
I was originally just using a large SD card with what I wanted to watch that week on it but I have moved to external. My 3TB Mybook works excellent with the Pi and has never had any trouble being detected or playing files off it.
Case
Get a case of course, otherwise you just have a small PCB touching everything and you will eventually kill it. There are very simple and cheap cases to get but in my case I went for a more expensive PiBow. I went with the PiBow because the colour arrangement reminded me of the AppleII and the C64. It is a very smart looking case in my opinion.
Some things to consider
The Pi itself may only be $35 but keep in mind you need to buy cables, case, storage etc, it DOES add up but it is a fun platform to pursue. There seems to be endless documents on elaborate electronics projects to run with it and also simpler things like the media server like what I am using mine for.
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