RaspberryPi

Please be aware that this is in flux as a transition is made to qOrbiter. RaspberryPi diskless creation has stabilized somewhat, MD and qMD capabilities do not configure automatically at this point.

Device Specification

The Raspberry Pi is an ARM based computer the size of a credit card. 700Mhz, 256MB or 512MB RAM, FastEthernet, 2xUSB, GPIO

Development

See Porting_Raspbian for the current development status of LinuxMCE on Raspberry Pi.

Media Director

The Raspberry Pi can be used as a minimal Media Director within LinuxMCE. The following instructions will show how to create a MD.

Requirements

• Your core must be LinuxMCE 1204 or higher.
• The Raspberry Pi must be plugged into the internal side of your LinuxMCE core's network to act as a media director.
• The Raspberry Pi must be a 512MB Model B (or B+). The Model A and the 256MB Model B do not have enough RAM to boot into Orbiter.
• The Raspberry Pi must be plugged in using the HDMI connector and using HDMI sound.
• You may wish to have a usb keyboard or mouse for interaction. USB-UIRT/MCE Remote is also possible.

Setup Steps

• On the Core:
  • Install the default pxe kernel package for the Raspberry Pi. (https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/118201886/linux-image-default-raspbian-wheezy_3.10-3-rpi-lmce1_all.deb)
  • edit /usr/pluto/bin/Diskless_CreateTBZ.sh to enable "raspbian_armhf" as a TARGET_TYPE
  • run /usr/pluto/bin/Diskless_CreateTBZ.sh to create a raspbian tarball

• Get the LinuxMCE Raspberry Pi MD sdcard contents.
  • Download - https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/118201886/sdcard.zip
    • Format the sdcard for VFAT using the sd card formatter for Mac or Windows https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter_4, or using mkfs on linux.
    • Copy the entire contents of the sdcard zip to the newly formatted sdcard, all files should be in the root directory of the card with no sub-directories.
• Insert the sdcard into the Raspberry Pi.
• Power up the Raspberry Pi.
• On first boot the u-boot bootloader will start, it will grab the default pxe kernel/initrd.

There is a kernel bug that can try to load nfs prior to the network driver.  If you encounter a kernel panic then reboot the pi and try again.  This will only happen during these first few boots.

• Raspberry Pi will display "Announced ourselves to the router" and the core will run Diskless_Setup to prepare the MD.
• The Raspberry Pi will reboot once Diskless_Setup completes properly.
• On second boot the bootloader on the sdcard will be updated to the version the MD image is using.
• The Raspberry Pi will reboot.
• On third boot you will be presented with a terminal login.

What works

• Embedded phone works on rPi. You'll have to delete /etc/asound.conf. You'll have to set audio to HDMI in webadmin -> Wizard -> Media Director for simplephone to switch to HDMI output.

What does not work

• Audio playback: xine-player always wants to initialize video, even for audio MP3 files. It fails because it can't initialize 'xv' or 'xshm' video driver.
• Video playback: omxplayer integration is in pipeline
  • delete xine player, mplayer, mythtv player devices from your new media director.
  • rm /etc/asound.conf
  • omx player (very alpha) may play audio and video after a router reload.