Making a smart TV with XBMC and a Raspberry Pi

The Raspberry Pi can take on a wide range of tasks, but one of the favorite applications is using the Raspberry Pi as a media center.

Adding a Raspberry Pi to a plain old boring television set lets you play clips from YouTube and online media libraries, and you can even stream video to the TV from a data storage device or an external hard drive. Getting started on creating these capabilities is easy when you use distributions like Raspbmc [1] or OpenELEC [2] together with XBMC media center software, which is in the process of changing its name to the Kodi media player [3].

XBMC-based Rasp Pi distributions like Raspbmc and OpenELEC only install the media center system as it is. (See the box titled "Installing Raspbmc and OpenELEC.") The user is responsible for adapting XBMC after the first start, and tailoring XBMC to your own environment is often more difficult than it looks. This article offers some helpful tips on operating XBMC. (Also see the "Raspbmc or OpenELEC?" box.)

Setting Up XBMC

After installing an XBMC-based distribution, start the system. XBMC works best when you connect a mouse and keyboard to the Raspberry Pi. A mouse and keyboard make it easier to do things like specify paths and access data.

At a later phase in the project, when the television set is able to transmit control commands from the TV remote control via CEC to the media center software, you won't need the keyboard and mouse. (See the box titled "CEC.")

Using either a mouse or the arrow keys on the keyboard, navigate from the main menu to the menu options: Pictures, Videos, Music, Programs, System. The Down arrow key takes you into the submenus, and the Up arrow key takes you back. You can return to the main menu at any time by pressing the Esc key. Once in the menus, navigate step by step backwards using the Backspace key. The C key takes you to the context menus, which you can open with a right mouse click.

Table 1 describes some important XBMC settings. You will find all these menu options under System | Settings. Note that the news ticker that sometimes appears in the main menu is not absolutely necessary and, in fact, slows down the menu build perceptibly. You can deactivate the ticker under System | Appearance | Skin | Show RSS News Feeds.

Both XBMC distributions have a configuration tool. Raspbmc integrates the Raspbmc Settings into the Programs menu. The settings entry for OpenELEC appears in the System menu. Be sure to set up network access. The Raspbmc tool (Figure 1) offers the added option of connecting other hardware like external sound cards, webcams, and infrared receivers. The Raspbmc tool also makes it possible to install nightly builds.

Figure 1: Configure the network, or even increase the clock speed, in the Raspbmc settings.

Adding Media

The media center doesn't have much use unless it also has content. XBMC will not search for media files on its own, so you will need to let the program know where it should look for what. XBMC uses this information to fill a database that will have to be updated. By way of example, you can direct XBMC to look for films or TV series. But don't insert all of your media collection in one dump. Categorizing media into movies, TV series, images, and music is very important when building the database.

To categorize your files, follow the menus to Videos | Files | Add videos and, in the Add video source dialog, select the find option. A window will open, from which you can incorporate network filesystem access via Network file system (NFS) or Windows Network (SMB). You can also browse via UPnP Devices on UPnP and DLNA servers. The [Right Arrow] key followed by OK finishes the input. As a final step, the user has the option of naming the media source. For instance, you might choose movies on the Server or TV Shows on NAS.

XBMC displays the content of the media database with the filename. It can also load and display a DVD or CD cover, as well as a significant amount of information from the Internet, such as plots, actors, or IMDb chart rankings. If you want to take advantage of this feature, you need to tell XBMC what kind of content is on the newly created media source. You can select either Musicvideos, TV-Series, or movies under this folder contains. XBMC then loads a suitable scraper program that extracts desired information like the artist or cast, as well as additional images from the website.

Storage devices connected via USB automatically appear as separate entries under Videos | Files. You should select one with the arrow key on the keyboard and open the context menu Define content with the C key. You can open the menu with the mouse by right-clicking on the corresponding entry of the storage device. When there is more than one kind of media (e.g., music, TV series, movies, or images) saved on the device, you need to go further to the folder that contains just one type of media.

Repeat these steps for all of the media and memory locations. It will not matter that some media content is on a hard drive connected to the Rasp Pi and other content requires network access for a network server. XBMC incorporates all the content for one type of media into the corresponding category.