Raspbmc official release!

So, you might've seen that the official Raspbmc release is out.  Up until now I've been using Raspbmc RC5 (release candidate 5).  Following a lot of hard work the guys over as Raspbmc have reached a point where they have a stable, feature-rich version based on XMBC 12.  And so they've released Raspbmc v1.0.

Take a look at the details Raspbmc final release.

And you can download it Raspbmc Downloads.

For details on installing, take a at some of my earlier posts:
Installing
Getting wireless working

I haven't installed this yet (just waiting on a new SD card, busy watching from my current card), but will give this a whirl soon and fingers crossed, report back that is works like a charm!

Raspbmc - Part 2

So – I’ve had a week or two to play around with Raspbmc and thought I’d give some feedback.  Overall impression?  Damn good!  I’m trying hard to not sound over-zealous about it, but I’m very happy with what I’ve seen so far.  I’ve got my all my media loaded, I can control it with my TV remote & Android phone, it’s stable and slick.

Take a look here for more detail.

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.

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.

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.

Media Centres

So - about 5 months ago a posted about testing out Media Centres and said I'd test them out and provide feedback.  So - slightly delayed, but here it is.

Just finished watching Thor (local USB) - great performance, not a single glitch.  Coming soon - Wireless & Remote Control!

Overclocking?

So - you might've read something about overclocking recently.

Essentially what this means is you can get roughly 50% extra performance out of your Pi!  It'll allow you to overclock the CPU to up to 1Ghz and while the Pi is cool enough it'll run at this level.  If it overheats?  Well, they've added a fail safe into the latest Rasbian - it'll fall back to a lower config:

And best of all, it's 100% endorsed by the foundation - you can do this without invalidating your warranty!  So - try out the latest distro - you can find it here.

Enjoy!

Start VNC automatically

So a couple of you have been asking about getting VNC to start automatically (me included).  I did a bit of digging and have figured out what to do - it's a few simple steps.  First off though, must say thanks to Penguin Tutor for the actual answer to this issue.


So - I'm assuming that you have VNC up and running, working if you start it manually after each boot.  If not, take a look here.


Create startup file
The first thing you need to do is create the file that will actually start VNC on startup.  I'm doing this via Putty (instructions here), but you can just as easily use Terminal directly from the Pi.

Type the following:
sudo nano /etc/init.d/tightvncserver

NOTE: nano is a lightweight editor - the command above will create a new file called tightvncserver in the /etc/init.d directory and open it for editing, presenting the following screen (note the [ New File ] entry at the bottom, indicating a new file):

Once you have the file open, paste in the following:

# First configure the user you want to run this under - this will generally be pi, unless you've created your own users
export USER='pi'

eval cd ~$USER

# Check the state of the command - this'll either be start or stop 
case "$1" in
  start)
    # if it's start, then start vncserver using the details below
    su $USER -c '/usr/bin/vncserver :1 -geometry 1280x800 -depth 16 -pixelformat rgb565'
    echo "Starting vncserver for $USER "
    ;;
  stop)
    # if it's stop, then just kill the process
    pkill Xtightvnc
    echo "vncserver stopped"
    ;;
  *)
    echo "Usage: /etc/init.d/vncserver {start|stop}"
    exit 1
    ;;
esac
exit 0

# thanks - check out http://myraspberrypiexperience.blogspot.co.uk for more info!


NOTE: In the file I've specified my own resolution with the text -geometry 1280x800 - you can leave this out of you want

This will be what your screen now looks like.

To exit, press Ctrl+X.  You'll be prompted to save - just type Y:

You'll be prompted to confirm the filename - just press Enter:

Set file properties
Once that's done make sure the file has the right propertied by typing the following:
sudo chmod 755 /etc/init.d/tightvncserver

NOTE: Important to do this step every time you modify this file.  I redid these steps to create the tutorial, skipped this step and couldn't VNC in on the reboot!

Add File to startup sequence
And now just add your file to the list of startup actions by typing the following:
sudo update-rc.d tightvncserver defaults

And that should be it!  Just restart, and you should be able to VNC straight in!