Portable Media Center for Camper Van

[Wanderglobe]

I recently purchased a Pi to use as a media server in my VW camper van. I have about 1500 movies, 100 TV series and around 300 GBs of music that I'd like to control through one interface. I've installed and played around with Kodi which is a nice, simple interface but I'm not sure if what I want to do is even possible. Let me explain.

I want to avoid using the inverter. They're noisy and are a power draw. I am not on a network inside the bus. I have a 7 inch Android tablet mounted in the back of the camper and I'd like to have the Pi stream to the android device like a touch screen monitor. It would work like Plex but without having to run another server.

What I have:
Rasberry Pi 2
Wifi adapter
Bluetooth adapter
External drives
12 volt USB hub

I'd like to avoid using a monitor because I use the tablet for other things like weather, Skype, alarm clock etc. Thanks in advance for any helpful advice or ideas.



This is the beast it's going into.

[jamesh]

I simply run OpenELEC on the Pi with a wireless adapter in access point mode. The tablets in the camper simply log in to the access point and stream from that. I run the Pi from a cigarette to USB adapter, get a decent one, and the HD attached to the Pi is powered by the Pi USB and needs the high current setting on the USB ports to work.

[Wanderglobe]

I simply run OpenELEC on the Pi with a wireless adapter in access point mode. The tablets in the camper simply log in to the access point and stream from that. I run the Pi from a cigarette to USB adapter, get a decent one, and the HD attached to the Pi is powered by the Pi USB and needs the high current setting on the USB ports to work.

Thanks for the reply James. I'll give that a shot. Much appreciated.

[pssturges]

I think I your tablet is capable of playing all your content, I would install kodi on that and just use the pi to share the content via samba. Set up kodi to access the content on the share.

[Wanderglobe]

I think I your tablet is capable of playing all your content, I would install kodi on that and just use the pi to share the content via samba. Set up kodi to access the content on the share.

I could do but I like having access to the movie posters and information. There's a lot of content, over 1500 movies and 100 TV series.

[pssturges]

I could do but I like having access to the movie posters and information. There's a lot of content, over 1500 movies and 100 TV series.

You would be running a full version of Kodi on the tablet with all the goodies that includes such as cover art, posters fanart etc. The content would just be stored on your Rpi with a hdd attached.

[Wanderglobe]

I could do but I like having access to the movie posters and information. There's a lot of content, over 1500 movies and 100 TV series.

You would be running a full version of Kodi on the tablet with all the goodies that includes such as cover art, posters fanart etc. The content would just be stored on your Rpi with a hdd attached.

Oh I see what you're saying. So the tablet would act as the media server instead. I'll have to give that a try. Thanks a lot.

[drgeoff]

I could do but I like having access to the movie posters and information. There's a lot of content, over 1500 movies and 100 TV series.

You would be running a full version of Kodi on the tablet with all the goodies that includes such as cover art, posters fanart etc. The content would just be stored on your Rpi with a hdd attached.

Oh I see what you're saying. So the tablet would act as the media server instead. I'll have to give that a try. Thanks a lot.

No, you don't see!

He was saying to use the RPi and HDD as server and the tablet as the client (=player).