What You Will Need
- 8GB SD Card that holds your OS
- Wifi Dongle (USB)
- USB (if you plan on loading media from one)
- Raspberry Pi
- USB Power Supply for Raspberry Pi
- USB Keyboard/mouse
- HDMI cable
- A display for your media center -- You can use an old LED/LCD computer monitor with HDMI or VGA (Please note that if you use VGA you will need an HDMI-VGA converter cable), or even hook it up to most modern TVs (As long as it has an HDMI port).
In case you are having trouble finding these items, or if you just want to order everything from Amazon, I have each item hyperlinked (Except the LED/LCD screen). Also, you can buy everything in a bundled kit on amazon as well for ~$55-$60, excluding the keyboard/mouse and display screen. Find it here.
Installing OSMC onto your Raspberry Pi
Older tutorials might tell you that you'll want to install Raspbmc (Raspberry Pi Media Center) -- However, Raspbmc is no longer being maintained/updated, so we are going to use its successor OSMC. Raspbmc and OSMC are versions of XBMC that have been optimized for use with the Raspberry Pi -- but keep in mind there are other versions of XBMC out there as well, each with their own advantages/disadvantages.
The first step is to install OSMC onto your 8GB SD Card using your home computer/laptop -- You'll want to follow the instructions for that on this page. From there, you will download the appropriate package based on whether your home computer/laptop using Windows, OS X (Mac), or Linux.
Once downloaded, make sure your SD card in in your SD card reader on your home computer/laptop and then go ahead and run the installer you just downloaded.
At this point, you might run into a snag if you are on a Mac and see the following:
Since this project is Open Source and something we are downloading from the internet, your computer's security preferences are flagging this as an "unidentified developer." To get around this, go to your top-left corner and click the Apple icon and go to "System Preferences...". From there we want to enter "Security & Privacy". Your screen should now look like this:
You may need to click the lock so you can makes changes, but what we want to do is change "Allow apps downloaded from" from "Mac App Store and identified develops" to "Anywhere". We can change this back (which is recommended) after we've run the installer. Once this is saved, go ahead and try running the installer again.
Now that the installer is running, it will give you options for language and what you want to install OSMC on. Choose the appropriate version of Raspberry Pi you have, and for version choose the latest version (at time of writing this blog post it was 2017.02-2). From there just fill everything out and install it "on an SD card." If you have a WiFi dongle, you can setup the wireless connection, or you can skip this step and just continue with wired. Don't forget to select your SD card under the device selection. Once you've fill everything in, go ahead and click install. NOTE that this will erase anything else you had on that SD card, so make sure you've saved anything you want to keep on your desktop/laptop/USB drive!
Hook Up Your Raspberry Pi
All you have to do now is hook up your Raspberry Pi just like you would if you were using it as a computer. Make sure to transfer your SD card from your home computer/laptop to the Raspberry Pi, plug in the USB mouse/keyboard, connect the HDMI to the Pi and LED/LCD screen (or TV), and lastly connect it to your power source (micro USB power supply). The Raspberry Pi will automatically boot up from the SD card and begin the installation process. Once finished, you'll want to reboot your Raspberry Pi and it will automatically start OSMC!
From here you can plug in your USB with videos/music/photos etc. and begin using your Raspberry Pi as a Media Center! Look for further posts on OSMC and how to optimize your Raspberry Pi media center.
Questions? Comments? Anything you want me to dig deeper on? Let me know via comments or email!
No comments:
Post a Comment