Pi Nas / Media Server/player

[NozSpark]

Mine is on all the time too

I have a keyboard and mouse plugged in and the Yatsee app for my phone & tablet..... It works well, but is a bit slow as it only has a class 4 memory card

I do have plans for a NAS drive,,,, I assume that you can use it as a storage device for the Pi??

 

[steptoe]

Cheers. I just bought a pair of these from Currys cheapest I could find & works well:

http://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/computing-accessories/networking/power-line-networking/tp-link-tl-pa411kit-av500-powerline-adapter-starter-kit-16842033-pdt.html?gclid=CjwKEAiAw56lBRCs29jB9uOvkygSJADnD3-6Q57Sya81kSSGglCv1oK_eBBcQwpvZbT7zV1tquYFcRoC-6Hw_wcB&srcid=198&cmpid=ppc~gg~~~Exact&mctag=gg_goog_7904&s_kwcid=AL!3391!3!48502155499!!!g!81083078899!&ef_id=VJ1NPgAAAMbLlWqj:20150103221022:s

i bought mine off ebay, EDIMAX, I like those, never had any issue with edimax anything, £12 for a pair of wired iirc, and £15 for a pair with a wireless side,

Mine is on all the time too

I have a keyboard and mouse plugged in and the Yatsee app for my phone & tablet..... It works well, but is a bit slow as it only has a class 4 memory card

I do have plans for a NAS drive,,,, I assume that you can use it as a storage device for the Pi??

Noz, deffo get a faster card, I couldnt believe the difference it made to mine,

 

[NozSpark]

If I can get it working properly then I will,,, I've just found a VPN tutorial on youtube

 

[OnOff]

One gutted DVD player, just having a play with layout. The ATX psu was way too noisy for the living room. What I do have though is a few 2A jobbies providing 5 & 12V, thinking one for the Pi and the other for the two, mirrored HDDs. Got to "combine" the two IEC feeds into one input . 

Just slung a couple of old drives in there for now. Plan is to fill the front panel button holes, sand and paint etc - probably satin black. Will leave the smoked plastic front window for the wireless keyboard and mouse RF to get through and it'll be hard wired for ethernet via a rear socket. Got to make some mounting rails for the HDDs now out of scrap ali angle. CHEAP is the word! I can see BIG cable ties for the PSUs!

The Pi will be mounted far enough forward maybe to give easy access through the old DVD slot so I can change the SD card etc. 

Add rear mounting HDMI etc.

 

[OnOff]

You could mount the usb sticks external to the enclosure (better signal for wifi if it is wifi?) with a usb extender cable.

Have you got a WiPi ?

Plan is to hard wire back to the router with good old Cat-5.........as in it's good, it's old and I've got loads! 

Don't have a WiPi but I have run the Pi with Rasbian on it and connected wireless using a Sumvision 300Mbps usb adaptor / dongle I got with a media player - worked fine tbh.

Mains in is the "main" one at the moment to feed those two bricks - thinking a male IEC chassis mount plug let into the back panel then solder a couple of short leads with in-line females into the bricks. Then "convert" one brick output to (just) give 5V to the Pi and the other 5 & 12V to power to the drives.

 

[OnOff]

PM me your addy and ill send you a WiPi to have a play with - I ordered 2 by mistake on a red wine session and I'm sure its been on my desk under some carp for the last 12 months.....

That's v.kind of you and I'll take you up on that if you don't mind .................. but I thought they were only 150Mbps? If you want a drink for it then I'll gladly PayPal you something!

EDIT: Just dawned on me I've got 24 IEC chassis mounting males.....somewhere. I remember taking them out of some kit and thinking they would come in handy! Just got to find the box!

 

[OnOff]

It cost £10.15 plus Vat from farewell 

Bung the forum a few quid in a donation - i don't want anything for it

Let me make sure i can find it first though !!! Wont be till next week !

TEF coffers duly swelled by a tenner! No worries if you can't find it.

 

[OnOff]

Thinking a couple of these cheap Toshiba drives:

http://www.dabs.com/products/toshiba-2tb-sata-6gb-s-64mb-7200rpm-3-5--hard-drive-9126.html?utm_source=google&utm_medium=ppc%20product%20search&utm_campaign=Components%20and%20Storage%20-%20Hard%20Drives%20-%20Internal%20Hard%20Drives

To be mirrored. Any thoughts?

EDIT: Just debating whether to venture out into the cold and fetch a sheet of aluminium to make a new "base plate" in the the old DVD player case, clean slate to work off of and all that! Not looking forward to cutting to size......might venture over the neighbouring farm as they have a sheet metal guillotine albeit a rather rusty one. 

 

[OnOff]

As I can't yet stretch to a couple of decent RAID spec drives to mirror as a precursor I followed this and works a treat:

http://pimylifeup.com/raspberry-pi-nas/

Now have a model B Pi plugged into the router and an external HDD plugged into the Pi. Can access the HDD media content on various devices across the network at home. Easy to add stuff too!

Still aiming at the end of the day to have the "under the telly" box, combined XBMC media server / NAS. Might get a 1GB Pi though. Doesn't help that I don't like Raspbian as an OS.

 

[OnOff]

Been reading that a Pi is maybe not the ideal basis for a NAS something to do with the USB port(s) being "shared" with the ethernet. BUT this was from a piece written in 2012:

https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=3313

Guessing this was an earlier Pi than I have here, the one I have is the B+ with 4 USB ports. So is there any issue with this model "sharing" with the ethernet?

I've then come across this about using a USB Gigabit adapter:

http://www.midwesternmac.com/blogs/jeff-geerling/getting-gigabit-networking

A bit lost tbh as to what it all means. Would using a USB ethernet adapter improve this throughput they're on about, any thoughts?

Cheers

 

[steptoe]

Im not sure TBH

but, as another bit of perhaps useful info,

Ive worked out how to put an on/off button and a reset button on the Pi, means you dont need a keyboard or anything to shut it down, pushing the button will either run a

sudo shutdown -h nowscript,

or a

sudo rebootscript,

depending on which button you push 

buttons go on 2 of the pinless headers, so you need some 2.54mm pins, 2 x pairs,  keeps your gpio pins free for other stuff,

As I can't yet stretch to a couple of decent RAID spec drives to mirror as a precursor I followed this and works a treat:

http://pimylifeup.com/raspberry-pi-nas/

Now have a model B Pi plugged into the router and an external HDD plugged into the Pi. Can access the HDD media content on various devices across the network at home. Easy to add stuff too!

Still aiming at the end of the day to have the "under the telly" box, combined XBMC media server / NAS. Might get a 1GB Pi though. Doesn't help that I don't like Raspbian as an OS.

need a cheap source of 1TB HDDs,

buy a couple of sky+ boxes,