Cheap XBMC Box = Raspberry Pi ?

[John]

Thanks guys, I have been following this thread as well and am getting a raspberry Pi. Thanks to baiju for the links. Ordered the board, heat sinks, and case as of now.

Will look at home if I have any decent USB charger and I think I have some micro SDs + SD adaptor lying some place. What is the minimum needed charger? 2 amps?

Plan to hook up an external HDD (have a 3.5" SATA lying which I will put in a casing).



I want to use the Pi only for torrents, nothing else. Which is a good distro to use for this? Need something easy to use.

 

[baijuxavior]

I'm using a one amp charger, but a two amp is recommended if you want to connect external hdd. If the hdd has its own charger then 1A is enough.

For OS, I'm using Raspbian. You can try others also. Clients used are deluge and transmission. Both have its own pros and cons. Using port forwarding in router, you can control the downloads from anywhere in the world through internet.

 

[John]

I'm using a one amp charger, but a two amp is recommended if you want to connect external hdd. If the hdd has its own charger then 1A is enough.

For OS, I'm using Raspbian. You can try others also. Clients used are deluge and transmission. Both have its own pros and cons. Using port forwarding in router, you can control the downloads from anywhere in the world through internet.

Great. Will see if I have a 1 amp charger. As I plan to put the HDD into its own casing with power supply. Will try Raspbian.

 

[manniraj]

Got hold of a Pi last week and running Raspxbmc and love its simplicity. I was able to play a 20GB MKV movie over Windows shared folder from my HTPC without any issues over the LAN. Its a simple and VFM media player. I got mine with a case and used a old 4GB SD card to load the OS and was able to run within 10 min :clapping:

 

[John]

Got hold of a Pi last week and running Raspxbmc and love its simplicity. I was able to play a 20GB MKV movie over Windows shared folder from my HTPC without any issues over the LAN. Its a simple and VFM media player. I got mine with a case and used a old 4GB SD card to load the OS and was able to run within 10 min :clapping:

Sounds good bud.

How have you powered the HDD? The HDD is powered separately? Or is there no hdd attached to the Pi (you said you played over LAN)

 

[manniraj]

Sounds good bud.

How have you powered the HDD? The HDD is powered separately?

As I said in my earlier post I have not connected any HDD but playing the movies over the LAN network from my dedicated HTPC. I have used a 2 amp, 5V my old micromax tab charger and it works fine. Yet to try the option of using the TVs in-built USB port as a charger port. Various users were able to do the same. If this comes out good then we can fix it back to the TV and power it via its USB port and just run the LAN and HDMI cables to it. Also I have come across some threads in different forums of users going with some CEC settings to automatically power if off (shutdown) when the TV is powered off.

 

[John]

Guys, which client/software do you use for torrents ? On Noobs? Or are you guys using another OS?

 

[baijuxavior]

I am using transmission and deluge clients with Raspbian OS. I feel deluge is better than transmission. With transmission, the download queue sometime stops. You can install transmission by following Me, Myself and a Raspberry PI: Raspberry Pi Bit-Torrent/DLNA/SAMBA Server Part 3: Setting up Deluge as a Headless Bittorrent Server. Use option 2.

 

[chayan]

I am using one of the small android tv boxes (8GB inbuild, wireless, BT, LAN, HDMI) and XBMC runs just fine.
Add another 1.5K and you get a remote too.

 

[John]

Was tinkering with the raspberry pi after installing Rasbian and deluge on Sunday. I am facing some issues and would appreciate inputs from experienced guys. I am a n00b in Linux, so please bear with me. I am entering the commands via ssh (putty).

1) There is a 1 TB external HDD (Transcend) that is attached the the Raspberry Pi. I want to mount it on start up. I have followed the steps as outlined here , but I am not able to get it working.

2) I installed deluge (remote client) on my Win 7 desktop, am able to connect to the Deluge Daemon on the Pi, but download shows an error. Should the download directory be /media/transcend? Transcend happens to be the name of the HDD.

3) I am able to run deluge directly on the Pi, but again, I am not able to download the file to the external HDD. Despite changing settings, it downloads to Pi/home (which is obviously too small to download large files to).

4) Wish to install Samba and share it on my network. Which is a good tutorial for it?

Thanks in advance guys.

 

[vikoma]

One of the options is to get Roku. It is a great package for less than $100, and youtube and internet radios (like tunein) are just too good; particularly because included remote (RF based), and absolutely no lag; extremely fast. WiFi is built-in. The youtube channel in turn supports browsing on mobile/PC and playing on Roku. You don't even need to select youtube channel; you just pick up your mobile, select the youtube song and play.

For attached media playing, there is a channel; but its interface is limited - no playlists etc. There are other channels to play from network storage - I am yet to experiment. Like youtube, they do allow you to browse and play from mobile app.

The main negative is that it outputs HDMI, the only option for DAC is the one used in the AVR.

 

[vikoma]

May be you should try this: Raspberry Pi gets its own sound card

And interestingly, the cost of that card is only about Rs. 2500 or so, so it might be cheaper solution than using ODAC. But you need kernel to use their drivers etc, so one has to wait for distribution to incorporate it. There is this project called Volumino, which intends to provide best HiFi experience with selected DACs, including the I2S based ones like the one quoted above: A new Raspberry PI version and some news - Volumio

 

[dheerajjotwani]

And interestingly, the cost of that card is only about Rs. 2500 or so, so it might be cheaper solution than using ODAC. But you need kernel to use their drivers etc, so one has to wait for distribution to incorporate it. There is this project called Volumino, which intends to provide best HiFi experience with selected DACs, including the I2S based ones like the one quoted above: A new Raspberry PI version and some news - Volumio

i have used the wolfson card with squeezplug distro for the rpi.... it works like a charm and can run a server and a player instance both on the same rpi.

 

[dheerajjotwani]

just to add... to those running raspbmc... give openelec a try for rpi. its the cleanest experience. i have 3 instances running at home and all work extremely efficiently.

@john
pm me will assist you set those on the rpi

 

[John]

just to add... to those running raspbmc... give openelec a try for rpi. its the cleanest experience. i have 3 instances running at home and all work extremely efficiently.

@john
pm me will assist you set those on the rpi

Thanks bud, I will try it out and pm you as needed. I really need to get it done.

 

[manniraj]

just to add... to those running raspbmc... give openelec a try for rpi. its the cleanest experience. i have 3 instances running at home and all work extremely efficiently.

@john
pm me will assist you set those on the rpi

@dheeraj, thanks for the pointer of Openelec and I am planning to try on my rpi. Do you know whether a USB DAC (ODAC) works with the Openelec + RPI as it is not working with Raspbmc which I have right now on RPI. I am planning to use the ODAC for the audio but there is no way to choose the audio out as USB DAC except HDMI and Analog. The reason being I can use the RPI both for music and video files. The videos on NAS works brilliantly on RPI with raspbmc over my TP-Link power adapters.

 

[dheerajjotwani]

@manniraj well in openelec u can't use an external dac. The are working g to build in support for the l2S dac boards like wolfson, hifiberry etc.

What you can do though is to run a separate music player with its audio to usb odac and let raspbmc use analogue/hdmi. This would require you to set the right device id assigned to odac in the mpd player settings file. U can then control the mpd through a xbmc add on or your phone/tab etc.

No solution for video output through dac though I'm afraid

 

[manniraj]

@manniraj well in openelec u can't use an external dac. The are working g to build in support for the l2S dac boards like wolfson, hifiberry etc.

What you can do though is to run a separate music player with its audio to usb odac and let raspbmc use analogue/hdmi. This would require you to set the right device id assigned to odac in the mpd player settings file. U can then control the mpd through a xbmc add on or your phone/tab etc.

No solution for video output through dac though I'm afraid

Hmm, I saw an option today like "Enable External Sound Card" under the Raspbmc Settings of the Program in the XBMC menu. I have enabled it but still the ODAC cannot be chosen. Looking at online reviews it seems that the latest Raspbmc is the problem with external sound cards and the earlier versions used to support it. I think as you said we cannot use the USB DAC with XBMC both for videos/music files on RPI.

 

[dheerajjotwani]

I just tried raspbmc once like a year ago. Always have been using openelec since then on almost all devices I run at home. It's lean and mean and does the job with agility. Can't comment on recent build of raspbmc but am willing to try since.

I had several clicking issues using the nuforce udac with rpi and gave up since on usb dacs. Got the Wolfson and for audio it's a nifty vim setup. I2s is the way to go for serious audio on rpi...

 

[manniraj]

I just tried raspbmc once like a year ago. Always have been using openelec since then on almost all devices I run at home. It's lean and mean and does the job with agility. Can't comment on recent build of raspbmc but am willing to try since.

I had several clicking issues using the nuforce udac with rpi and gave up since on usb dacs. Got the Wolfson and for audio it's a nifty vim setup. I2s is the way to go for serious audio on rpi...

I got to know online that the Frodo 12.1 supported USB DACs on raspbmc on RPI. But unfortunately unable to get the Frodo 12.1 image to write to the SD card. I get only the nightly builds which is not a bootable image file. I am going to try the latest raspbmc and then downgrade under the raspbmc settings to the specific nightly build which used to support external sound DACs. Will post my feedback on the same.