Tuesday 22 January 2013

Right – let’s get on with this Raspbmc malarkey

OK – so here we are. I have my Pi. I have a working wireless connection. What should I do? Well, the answer to that has been screaming in the back of my mind ever since I heard about this brilliant bit of kit. That’s right – it’s Media Centre time!

So, I’ve started with Raspbmc. I can honestly say that I’m VERY impressed. The majority of stuff just works. And works well. My Pi’s been running for about 24 hours now, idling at about 15% CPU. I can switch over at any time, it responds immediately, lets me control it using my Android phone – hell, it even lets me use my SAMSUNG TV REMOTE to control it. And at the risk of repeating myself – it all just works.
This is what it looks like:
And this is how I did it.

NOTE: YOU'LL SEE THAT THE ABOVE LINK WILL TAKE YOU TO WWW.MYRASPBERRYPIEXPERIENCE.COM.  I'M MOVING TO A DEDICATED DOMAIN - YOU'LL BE ABLE TO FIND ALL PREVIOUS CONTENT THERE, ALONG WITH NEW POSTS.

Saturday 19 January 2013

My Pi has wings!!

So I’ve been threatening to do this for quite some time now. I finally got wireless working on my Pi. This will hopefully unlock all sorts functionality, most noticeably a small, quiet local media centre, streaming media from a server.

As I did this on a spur of the moment decision, I went down to my local Maplin today and bought a wireless card from there. They sell a Pi bundle, so I decided to just go for the card they include in that. It’s sold as a “N150 Nano Wi-Di USB Dongle”, and is Maplin-branded. £9.99, and hopefully working out the box:
http://www.maplin.co.uk/n150-nano-usb-wireless-adapter-681507
And this is what it looks like (excuse the poor photo – I’m sharing an SD card with my camera at the moment):
The good news? I plugged it in, booted it up, and everything just worked. It couldn’t possibly have been easier! For the few steps I DID take, have a look here.  

What next I hear you ask?  How about you take a stab at getting Raspbmc up and running for a brilliant media centre - take a look here.
NOTE: YOU'LL SEE THAT THE ABOVE LINK WILL TAKE YOU TO WWW.MYRASPBERRYPIEXPERIENCE.COM.  I'M MOVING TO A DEDICATED DOMAIN - YOU'LL BE ABLE TO FIND ALL PREVIOUS CONTENT THERE, ALONG WITH NEW POSTS.