Got a slice of Raspberry Pi

1TB Hard Drive, 8GB SD Card & Raspberry Pi

This morning, I brought something I'm quite intrigued and excited about - The Raspberry Pi. This is a small, credit card sized mini PC intended for pure experimentation. My base purpose for this little machine is to be a basic home theatre PC via the 1TB external hard drive you see above.

For months I've been hounding for the ideal set-up when it comes to my media. The Xbox 360 was simply a laughing stock when it came to handling outside media; the PS3 improved this experience nicely - despite PS3 media server not playing nicely on my network and having trouble with filetypes - the 'ecosystem' just didn't connect fluently. Fluency is what I was really searching for when it comes to managing my home media. It was for these reasons that I didn't opt for an Apple TV, Roku, Boxee etc. streaming box. The aforementioned devices each have great elememts; but all just lacked something.

I would have loved to have just purchased an Apple TV; jailbreak it; plug in a USB hard drive and away I go. Alas, in Apple's ideal world; you're locked down to their ecosystem, where your media brought from iTunes is stored in the iCloud and controlled by your iPhone to watch on your Apple TV. Want to take it elsewhere? Fuck you. Want to switch devices? Fuck you. Want to watch it without a network connection? Fuck you.

With the Raspberry Pi, I have a significant amount of freedom compared to a pre-bundled set-top. In an ideal world; I'd have a machine similar to this running Android 4.0+ (albeit there is an Android port for this - though very unstable). Maybe in the future...

To extend on previous posts; I am going to be using my Nexus 4 as a remote for this device and plan to integrate NFC tag use in this automation. For instance, I'd like to have a tag on my wall that, when scanned will enable the remote app, wake the Raspberry Pi up and start playing any random media I have.

I'm looking forward to tinkering with this, I do have high hopes for it but I have to remember that while it can handle 1080p media, it is only a £20-30 device; so I'll have to meet some limitations halfway. I'm also looking forward to making it look nice, I'm going to make a custom case for it. Perhaps hollowing a Tardis, a niPod classic, maybe an old Gameboy. Who knows? I'll be making a blogpost when I decide!

But er, I forgot to buy a USB WiFi adaptor.