New Tattoo
May 23rd, 2013
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A long time ago I got my first tattoo. It was an irish flag and even though, technically, it was drawn correctly in reality it appeared backwards. Also it was a very low quality tattoo with some mistakes. Most notably a line through the orange portion of the flag. Really it’s a lesson, make sure you fully research your tattoo artist and don’t do it while drunk.
After years of having it I finally got around to having it covered over and here are the results!
If you are wondering if it means anything. It is based on the triskele found on many stone age structures around Ireland. It’s over 5,500 years old and it’s most notable example is in Newgrange.
Raspberry Pi Entertainment Centre
April 8th, 2013
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I’ve been looking at getting an entertainment centre for a while now. But they are all so expensive. Instead I got a $35 Raspberry Pi and with some spare cables (and Lego bricks) that I had lying around I made myself an inexpensive, but brilliant, entertainment centre.
My Current Setup
Currently I have it set up with the following (which I will run you through setting up in this post)
- XBMC Video & Music Media Centre
- TV Remote Control
- Android App remote
- RTÉ, AerTV and TV3 Players
- BBC and 4OD Players
- YouTube
- 1Channel, Free TV Project and Navi-X on demand video
- iTunes Podcasts
- EU Radio Stations, Shoutcast
- Transmission BitTorrent Client
- Transmission/EZTV Android app
Raspberry Pi
What is a Raspberry Pi? It’s a credit-card sized computer that plugs into your TV and a keyboard. It’s a capable little PC which can be used for many of the things that your desktop PC does, like spreadsheets, word-processing and games. And most importantly for me it also plays high-definition video.
What are the specs?
- 2MB of Ram – Loads!
- 700Mhz ARM CPU – Which means no running windows, but don’t worry
- Broadcom Videocore IV Graphics – Nice 1080p HD graphics
- 1 x USB Ports – For your keyboard, mouse, hard drive
- HDMI and RCA video – To connect to your TV
- 3.5mm or HDMI Audio – Video is no good without audio
- SD Card – For the operating system and multimedia files
- NIC – For networking
- HDMI-CEC – So you can control it with your TV remote control
- Mini USB – For Power (I power mine off my TV’s USB port)
That can’t play HD video!
Yes it can actually. Don’t be put off by the low amount of RAM and CPU. What matters is the graphics card. And it’s well able to handle HD video. And with the HDMI output you can just plug it directly into the TV.
The GPU provides Open GL ES 2.0, hardware-accelerated OpenVG, and 1080p30 H.264 high-profile decode. The GPU is capable of 1Gpixel/s, 1.5Gtexel/s or 24 GFLOPs of general purpose compute and features a bunch of texture filtering and DMA infrastructure.
That is, graphics capabilities are roughly equivalent to Xbox 1 level of performance. Overall real world performance is something like a 300MHz Pentium 2, only with much, much swankier graphics. What does that mean? Simply put it means it can play High Definition video.
Cables
If you are like me you never throw away a cable because you never know when you might need one. Well it turns out we were right! For the Pi you will need the following cables (and a SD card)
- HDMI
- Network Cable
- Mini USB
- USB Keyboard & Mouse (for the initial setup, after that you won’t need them anymore)
- SD Card
Getting Started
If you follow the steps above you’ll get your Raspberry powered up but it’s not much use without an operating system. Since we are planning on installing an operating system and a media centre lets download something that will allow to install both at the same time. And don’t worry it’s really straightforward.
XBMC Video & Music Media Centre
As you might have guessed we aren’t the first people to have the bright idea of installing a XBMC media centre on a RaspberryPI. What we are going to do is pop the SD card into our Windows, MAC or Linux laptops. Once this is done go to here for Windows or here for MAC and Linux and follow the simple instructions.
Once you have followed the instructions insert your SD card into your Pi and sit back and watch it install. You’ll need your network cable plugged in.
To be honest, that is pretty much it. If you connect your hard drive you should be able to play videos. Of course when you try and plug in your hard drive you might notice you can’t. Because your USB slot is in use by your keyboard/mouse. Well don’t worry, if you want you could simply plug in a USB hub and use them all. But there are better ways.
Remotes
The easiest thing to use would be your TV remote control. If you are connected to your TV using the HDMI cable and your TV is CEC compatible then it should just work. Every wondered what those media buttons on your remote were for? Well now you know.
Or, you could download the Yatse android app. You can launch XBMC add-ons, queue music, play TV shows and more from this app.
Applications
The cool thing about XBMC is that people have written a load of apps for it. They are very easy to install. All you need to do is add a repository of apps and then install them from the Add-ons menu. The hardest thing is finding the repositories and installing them. But don’t worry. You can use this site to get a list of useful repositories and use the Repositories Installer to install those repository. Some of the apps I like are
- RTÉ, AerTV and TV3 Players
- BBC and 4OD Players
- YouTube
- 1Channel, Free TV Project and Navi-X on demand video
- iTunes Podcasts
- EU Radio Stations, Shoutcast
- ……and so many more
Torrents
Even though there are a number of places to stream videos from it’s still nice to have stuff locally. In fact XBMC excels at organising and displaying Movies, TV shows and Music. Since XBMC on the Raspberry is running Linux in the background you can simply install a BitTorrent Client on your Pi. The one I chose to use was Transmission.
To install it;
Run the following from the command line
sudo apt-get install transmission-daemon
If you can’t find the command line type Alt + Ctrl + F1 to open the console. The default login is pi with the password raspberry
To configure it;
Your main configuration file is
/var/lib/transmission-daemon/info/settings.json
In here you can set up usernames, passwords, ports and download locations. If you have hard drive connected it should be under the /media directory. By default you can open the GUI by pointing your browser at http://<raspberry-ip-address>:9091
To manage it;
Well as shown above you can just use your web browser but I use the Transmission Android App.
To find Torrents;
I use the EZTV android app. It is very quick to show you the latest TV shows. Often only minutes after they are aired.
That’s it!
And that’s it. in a short time you have a full featured entertainment centre. Where you can stream and download Movies, TV shows and music. Hopefully you found these tips helpful. If you need anymore detail on anything let me know in the comments.
Categories: Linux, Opinion electronics, entertainment centre, hd, Linux, media, movies, raspberry pi, torrents, xbmc
Paddys 2013
March 20th, 2013
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Went to Montreal for Paddys Day 2013. A great place to spend Paddys Day. In fact they made a weekend out of it. As did we. A great city and I’ll definitely go back. One of the best weekends I’ve had in a long while.
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Google Glass
February 20th, 2013
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If anybody wants to know what to get me for my birthday next year. Two words Google Glass.
Canadas Zombie Emergency Measures
February 15th, 2013
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Canadas Foreign Minister declares in Parliament that Canada will NEVER become a safe haven for Zombies. Quebec is the first province to implement emergency anti-zombie measures.
Phew! Better safe than sorry.
Blue Mountain – January 2013
February 2nd, 2013
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A quick video from the couple of days we spent snowboarding at Blue Mountain this week. Nice place. Loads of places to stay and some nice bars. Including an Irish bar stocked with chocolate and crisps (chips) from home. We had the odd drink as well.
Snowboarding – January 2013
January 28th, 2013
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Took the camera out snowboarding yesterday. This is what happened…….
Preventing people hogging the passing lane.
January 24th, 2013
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While I don’t condone this as a safe method of informing people that the passing lane should be for passing only it is effective.
Oh and this was shot in the US. Ontario police don’t seem to care if people are hogging the passing lane.
A Respectable Canadian Morning.
January 23rd, 2013
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This is more like it Toronto. A more respectable Canadian winters morning.
I saved €13,000 by leaving Ireland
January 15th, 2013
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So I’ve been away from Ireland for around a year and a half. Today I found out that the average Irish person has ended up paying €9,000 a year to the shareholders of European banks to keep them afloat. So I’ve saved €13,000 since leaving Ireland.
If anybody want’s to fly over to Toronto the drinks are on me!!
Small Print: Offer not valid to those already in Toronto
Graphic: http://notesonthefront.typepad.com
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