12 Months with Raspberry Pi - Still Hungry For More

Over 6 months ago, I'd published a post entitled "6 Months With The Raspberry Pi: A Reflection" - a sort of mini review for the Raspberry Pi. Now, it's been over a year since I'd bought the little thing, so how about another post?

I'd stated it many times in previous posts; but my mission statement for the the Pi was:

To have a highly customisable; easy to use; affordable home media center that can interact with other devices (all on different operating systems) seamlessly in my home.

The device is at this point now - I'm at a point where I am happy with it, so let's see what I'm working with:

- XBMC running on Xbian (Overclocked to High)
- Quartz Skin (Apple TV themed)
- Yatse Remote for Android & XBMC Remote for iOS
- Raspberry Pi Board
- USB WiFi Dongle
- USB Hub with Power Supply
- 1TB USB 2.5" Hard Drive\
- 2TB WD Storage (plugged into our Router)

Both hard drives have 'TV' and 'Movies' folder - the Western Digital hard drive was a present from me for my parents; knowing they have a hell of a lot of content. For ease of use, any content added to either hard drive is automatically added into XBMC. I've set the device to scan every 4 hours for new content. I'd like to have it update instantly with an addon called Watchdog - but for some reason this wasn't letting either hard drive spin down as it was constantly looking for new content, I decided a 4 hour interval would more than suffice.

The two hard drives merge into one library on the Raspberry Pi - locally and streaming over the network. I've run a few tests and the Pi has been able to handle any media being streamed over the network with no buffering. It takes about 5 seconds to initially grab the video but from then it's clear sailing. There has been a few hiccups; but nothing outrageous. The Pi can of course handle local 1080p flawlessly and any file type you want to throw at it (one of my main reasons for purchase was file handling).

I'm using the Quartz Skin - It looks just like an Apple TV, is lightweight on the Raspberry Pi and is simple to use. Plus, I've always been a sucker for the Apple TV's. The skin is quite snappy at the moment. It can struggle but again, it's nothing too major. It can get unusable if there's too many background processes, so I try and keep them at a minimal.

I've installed XBMC on everybody's phones, tablets. Yatse for Android and the official remote for iPhones. I wanted the device to be as easy as possible to use and once I showed my family how to initially use the remote it kind of explains itself. I'd recommend the apps to anybody with XBMC.

Another thing was that I wanted the files themselves to be easily accessible. I had to allow read and write access for the whole network (this can be done over SSH) so we could easily change, copy and add files if needs be, on any device. Both hard drives are accessible over the local area network (both on Windows and Android (via ES File Explorer)) - this means that if my sister's in the living room with the Pi and my I wanted to watch one of my shows, I can just fire up my phone, access the Pi via ES File Explorer and stream straight to my phone, PS3 or Windows 8 computer. Flawless, no messing around -exactly what I wanted!

Addons I've got installed are:

- YouTube
- iTunes Latest Trailors
- VEVO TV

The benefits of Android is that I can send media straight from my phone to the Pi with Androids integrated 'Share' feature. I can 'Send to XBMC' at the click of a button. It's also worth noting that Xbian supports AirPlay from iPhones!

I'm incredibly happy with the device and what it can do - especially at the price it's been running 95% flawlessly. Xbian occasionally throws out errors but I guess that's down to it being in BETA. My family and girlfriend are happy with using it so I guess it was a big victory!

Yesterday I experimented with PseudoTV Live. If you don't know, PSTVL uses your home media (and web streams) to allow you to channel surf with your content. Think a DIY Virgin or Sky box with customisable channels for your content. The program itself is great, but was too much for the Raspberry Pi to handle, I'd found. I guess this means I could start moving from the Pi to a dedicated miniPC soon. I'd like more power on a home theatre PC device to really beef it out with add-ons and skins. I'd had to keep things relatively lightweight for the Pi.