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Raspberry 3.14 - A Project & A Guide!
Hi all,
This is a project surrounding the Raspberry Pi which I have just kickstarted for my parents as they were after a media player which was more powerful than their 'Agoose' DVD player they had and the simplicity of using a external hard drive for films rather than lots of discs! This idea of this is just of course show a nice new computer being put together although it's simple and give a nice guide to how I completed it for anyone else who may be interested in what it can do overtime. I will be giving a indication of what items you will need and the cost of them as well.
Hardware Used - Components!
- £33.00 - Raspberry Pi B Model
- £1.00 - HDMI 1.5 Metre Gold Cable
- £3.50 - Raspberry Case (Clear)
- £5.10 - Belkin Ultra slim USB hub
- £6.80 - Sandisk Ultra 10 class 8GB SDHC
- £8.26 - Edimax wireless adapater 150Mbps
- £5.00 - Micro Usb Charger 5V (Must be 5v+)
- £1.00 - 3.5mm Audio Lead (If required)
Setting it all up
So getting it all together, for such a small unit getting the case together was so damn tricky! Very fiddly and done my head in the end, so I do highly recommend you get a pre-built case to put the raspberry in or just go bare and not have one altogether. But here's some pictures that should show everything. Pi Pr0n! - Samsung S3 Phone camera quality sorry!
Got the girlfriend to put the case together in the end as I had given up, does look good when the thing is in there though. Everything just slots into the Pi as simple as that, will add some more picture for that later on when it's fully setup and working. But that will be explained further down.
Pictures should give an indication of how little stuff is needed and how the little the actual thing is, when they say credit card size, they were right! And it packs one hell of a punch for it's performance. But all shall be revealed later in the thread. Not the world best photo's however it does give a good indication of whats going on.
Software Used & Installation
So, from having it all setup and everything plugged in [Warning] when intially setting up the software when it's loaded onto the SDHC from windows/OSX it need to be directly plugged in via an ethernet cable, the Pi will load up the drivers for keyboards/mice however not for wireless adapaters so just a heads up. However I chose to use Raspbmc as my software for the Pi and it's the best suited for what my parents wanted and is quite simple to use.
Everything installed fine and setup after a 20 minute wait and I was ready to roll with the system. Starting up the device is easy as pie as well (pun excluded) all you have to do is put the micro usb power supply in and it loads up swiftly. XBMC has a nice interface which is simple and easy to use so getting new apps/add-ons which I am yet to do as I need to download the network interface for wireless, you can add BBC iPlayer, 4OD, Youtube & Navi-x which allows you to stream movies seamlessly, which is what I shall be doing.
Installing wireless & etc (To come)
Wireless is pretty much a simple task as long as you do it right, unlike what I did and just assumed that I would need to do some programming. Fortunately you can download and install a add-on called Network Manager, whilst on ethernet to connect wireless to a home hub/wireless point. I'll take some pictures of the screen and such, but it now works flawlessly on wireless and streams beautifully, even with the worlds smallest wireless adapter.
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