That’s awesome, Lee! A question and a suggestion:
Q: Is there a way to do something similar for the Apple TV? S: That would make a great Instructable: https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.instructables.com_howto_raspberry-2520pi_&d=DwIFaQ&c=OAG1LQNACBDguGvBeNj18Swhr9TMTjS-x4O_KuapPgY&r=F2GFXrjLFqVo3VwvIlo_XYeEiRRjHv15rxcenz7A21woG2aFGcrzndoSsskxfmOs&m=q7_qNRJyvgJsDvIVZgv31uQQ63ju73I9ogfS5AllcRM&s=WKu638vwpSbSykcOXLwEfsHe0XgQ5d3fA0v1YrgndoA&e= Jonathan > On Dec 28, 2017, at 1:56 PM, Lee Larson <[email protected]> wrote: > > I write about something off-topic that I did on Christmas day. I’m writing it > here because my wife is tired of hearing about it and I want to tell someone… > > First, a little history. > > For years I've been running a Linux server in the basement to share out > videos, music and photos to the TVs in the house. It was running Plexserver > and the Plex client on our several Roku boxes could read the various media. A > few weeks ago, a power surge came through the house and zapped the server. > (It was behind a surge protector, but electricity is weird stuff.) > > To replace it, Santa delivered a Raspberry Pi 3B computer. > > The Pi is a marvelous little one-board computer about the size of a credit > card. The board itself is only $35. Add in a power supply, case and microSD > card, and a whole computer comes together for under $60. > > As you might expect, the Pi isn't top of the line, but it isn't bad. The > hardware is an ARM processor running at 1.2 GHz paired with a Broadcom > VideoCore IV GPU. Built-in are Ethernet, WiFi, Bluetooth, four standard USB > ports, HDMI video and a gigabyte of RAM. It has a microSD card slot for > booting. Pretty good for the price! > > Although it runs several operating systems, including Android, Chromium and > Windows 10 IoT, the preferred one is called Raspbian, a port of Debian Linux. > > On Christmas morning, the machine went together in under five minutes. The > completed project is about the same size as a bar of soap. I downloaded the > Raspbian installer image to my MacBook Pro and installed it onto a 32 GB > microSD card plugged into the USB all-format card reader normally used for my > camera cards. After inserting the microUSB into the Pi and hooking up a > keyboard, mouse and monitor, I plugged it into the wall. It booted right up > to the familiar Debian GUI. A few clicks later, the Pi was on my WiFi network > and I was surfing the Web with the Chrome browser. > > The standard Raspbian installation comes with the normal stuff you'd expect > on a Debian machine. Besides the Chrome browser, LibreOffice is there, giving > all the standard full-featured office apps. Email, a few games and lots of > programming utilities round out the standard image. There are thousands of > other programs that can be installed from the Debian software library. > Installation is drop-dead simple using the usual Debian apt-get utility. I > immediately added Emacs and a VNC server. > > What I found most amazing is the full installation of Mathematica that comes > for free with the standard Raspbian distribution. It is the Swiss army knife > of mathematical programs and has been one of my most useful tools for many > years. On the Mac or Windows, Mathematica is a subscription program costing > about $350 per year. The Raspberry Pi + Raspbian is certainly the least > expensive way to get Mathematica. > > One of the things I like to do when I get to play with Mathematica on a new > computer is run a few simple benchmarks. Usually, the first is computing π to > a million decimal places. On my old G5 tower Mac in 2004 it took about 12 > seconds. The 2016 MacBook Pro on which I'm writing this takes 0.0294 seconds. > The Pi took 4.23 seconds. This isn't bad for a $60 computer. I used to do > serious computing on that old G5 cheese grater and the Pi seems far more > capable. > > Just as an aside, I did a similar benchmark with my first computer, an Apple > //e, in 1983. Mathematica wasn't around yet, so I had to write a program for > the 6502 processor. It did π to 2000 decimal places in just over an hour. > (The very first deep computer calculation of π was done to 2037 decimal > places in 1949 by John von Neumann on the ENIAC. It took over 70 hours.) > > Back to my main goal, setting up the Pi as a media server. > > All the media I want to serve is kept on a WD MyCloud RAID connected to the > local network. The plan was to net mount the file server on the Pi, so it > looked like an external drive, and then install media serving software on the > Pi. > > The MyCloud can be accessed by standard Apple file sharing (APFS), Windows > file sharing (CIFS, SMB) and NFS. As a Linux machine, the natural choice > seemed to be NFS. But, Raspbian comes with Samba pre-installed, so CIFS is > also an option. I tried both and CIFS was the hands-down winner for speed. > > Now how to serve the media. > > There are several options available here. My previous server was running a > full-on home theater system called Plex It worked well with both the server > and Roku, but was a pain to install and keep up to date on the server. Its > main competitor is another home theater server called Kodi which seems to > require an Android phone in order to be useful on a Roku. Kodi was eliminated > because of Android and I didn’t feel like messing with Plex right away. > > There’s another method, which is pretty simple, lacking the silver bells and > shiny lights of the full theater systems: DLNA. Most people have never heard > of DLNA, but it’s actually a standard for serving media that’s been around > since the early 2000s. A lot of devices know how to handle it—many TVs, > Blu-Ray players and, most importantly, Roku. You often have to go spelunking > in the manuals to find it. DLNA is kind of the lowest common denominator for > media servers. > > Debian Linux includes a bare-bones program to serve DLNA. It took about two > minutes to install MiniDLNA on the Pi, and another ten minutes to configure > it. Configuration basically means telling it where to find the media files. > Right now, all the files are usable through the Roku Media Player channel on > any Roku box. They are also visible on my Toshiba Blu-Ray player and my only > smart TV, a small LG. In none of the cases is the interface pretty, but it > works well. > > On Christmas evening we all watched Casablanca for the umpteenth time, > streamed through the Roku. (Casablanca was the only movie everyone could > agree upon.) > > The Mac can access DLNA stuff with VLC and the iPad and iPhone can use it > through several apps such as C5. > > The Pi seems to be another small step in the inevitable decline of desktop > computing. Instead of having the traditional do-it-all box on the desk, we’re > moving toward lots of little dedicated devices. My Pi media server is sitting > on a shelf in a corner of the basement next to the cable modem, network > switch and file server. It has nothing plugged into it but power and an > Ethernet cable. I can log into it at any time from my Mac with VNC Viewer or > SSH from the terminal. > > I’ve already got ideas for how to use my next Raspberry Pi. > > HNY, > > L^2 > > PS/ As a final note, it occurred to me that the Pi, Roku, Blu-Ray player, > MyCloud and Netgear switch I mentioned above are all little dedicated > computers running Linux. > > --- > Lee Larson > [email protected] -- Jonathan Fletcher [email protected] Kentuckiana FileMaker Developers Group Next Meeting: 1/23/18 _______________________________________________ MacGroup mailing list Posting address: [email protected] Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/> Answers to questions: <http://erdos.math.louisville.edu/macgroup/>
