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RaspBMC on my Raspberry Pi

06/10/14

So. Raspberry Pi. They’re pretty cool, right?

That’s what I thought. And boy was I right! This thing has been so much fun to mess with. I made a simple reddit bot when I first got it, because I didn’t know what else to do. It’s /u/GoogleTranslateBot, but he’s currently down because I’m using my Raspberry Pi for other purposes. For a long while I didn’t know what to do with my Pi, but I thought a home theatre system sounded cool. I didn’t have anything in my living room to watch movies on anyways. I always had to bring my laptop in there to watch netflix, listen to music, or even play a mp4 video. I had no simple way to view my pictures with the rest of the family.

To be honest though, I never really minded bringing my laptop in. It wasn’t too hard. I only really care when I had to drag it out of my closet, cause that either meant it would have to be put back up, or just left out. I was in luck, because my raspberry pi was the perfect solution. This plan of action is a very popular one too, as there is RaspBMC, which is an OS dedicated to running XBMC (A home theatre software). There is also OpenELEC, which is also a OS for XBMC. I can’t say anything about OpenELEC though, as I never installed it.

Now, for the fun part. My setup. I have my Raspberry Pi mounted to the back of my TV, with power, Ethernet, and the audio cable all running through the stand which has openings for this very purpose. I was going to use my WiFi dongle originally, but I already had a Ethernet cable ran into the living room, not doing anything. I also got this remote. I got it on sale too, thanks to my friend John. Thanks John! It says compatible with all the Windows OS’s, but it also worked on my Raspberry Pi without me having to do any tinkering. It was pretty nice to have something work right on the first try. I also have my audio output hooked up through a standard 7.5mm jack from the Pi to surround sound in my living room. I can switch to the TV audio too, you can find the option under System->System->Audio Output (I think, just going by memory.)

I use the Pandora addon a lot, because before I could only use my phone as a music player. Now I can play music and play on my phone! The torrent addon XBMCTorrent wouldn’t show up in the official listing, so I just compiled the code from Steve’s GitHub and installed it. The addon is pretty neat. It’s similar to the headline making Popcorn Time App. Popcorn Time is slightly more polished looking, and they run their selection of torrents from their own servers (that they get from YIFY).

All in all, I think the Raspberry Pi is berry (See what I did there?) cool. I would definitely recommend getting one, even to just screw around with!