I’m thinking about what kind of opportunities there is for a portable media center you can have with you in the car, train or whatever.
I imagine that the media center would create its own WiFi, so that devices would be able to connect to it and access the media.
I know you could do something with a Raspberry Pi, but how could this work in practice? What would be an easy way to access the media from an iPad fx? What software could be used?
As a bonus, it would be pretty cool if the media center could connect to a hotel WiFi and then create a hotspot from that.
Edit: This would be used when on the move. So you would have the media with you on the media center.
Exactly. The point is to carry the media with you and access it without an actual internet connection. Especially on the go.
If I understand you correctly, I could install Jellyfin on a Raspberry Pi, setup a local WiFi on it and connect to it with an iPad that has a Jellyfin client installed?
Basically, jellyfin on the pi, with the wifi setup as an access point, and whatever amount of storage you need. The pi requires 5v/5a, so you’ll probably run into issues running off the car usb power, but a cheap 30amp hour battery should run it for 6-10 hours if my napkin math is right.
and connect to it with an iPad that has a Jellyfin client installed?
In my experience, you don’t even need the dedicated Jellyfin client. Just opening it up in a web browser works out of the box, so that’s potentially one less thing to download/install/manage for the clients.
That said, I’ve never tried to access Jellyfin from an iPad/iPhone/Mac so it might not be as seamless as my experiences on Android/Linux based devices. But I imagine they’d be fine; just test it out before you hit the road.
Generally the app is better. Compatible with more container formats, audio formats (surround sound, Dolby digital, etc), and has hardware supported decoding for h265 video in addition to h264.
Yes, I’ve done almost exactly this while traveling. You can even carry around a couple variously configured sd cards for different use cases. I had one with jellyfin for sharing locally and also Kodi for direct HDMI connection to TVs. There is a in app on Android for jellyfin called findroid that allows offline copies from the media server, which allowed me to not need the thing powered the entire time I wanted to watch something on my phone, just long enough to download it. Adding samba shares adds a other layer of accessibility. I had another SD Card with video game ROMs for retro gaming, but this one got left at home because it requires controllers and I didn’t think I’d use it that much. I had another with “little backup box” installed for automatically backing up my photos and videos after a day out exploring with my camera.
I used a Raspberry pi 5 for all of this, running from a battery backup, because I didn’t really need a keyboard once I had remote connections to my phone sorted out. Pick a rugged case and you case just toss it in your bag of chargers. It took up about as much space as a pack of cigarettes. Another option would be the Raspberry Pi 400, built into a keyboard. A little bulkier, but maybe more resilient in the face of technical difficulties.
You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: !selfhosted@lemmy.world
A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don’t control.
Rules:
Be civil: we’re here to support and learn from one another. Insults won’t be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.
No spam posting.
Posts have to be centered around self-hosting. There are other communities for discussing hardware or home computing. If it’s not obvious why your post topic revolves around selfhosting, please include details to make it clear.
Don’t duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click.
Submission headline should match the article title (don’t cherry-pick information from the title to fit your agenda).
No trolling.
Resources:
selfh.st Newsletter and index of selfhosted software and apps
Exactly. The point is to carry the media with you and access it without an actual internet connection. Especially on the go.
If I understand you correctly, I could install Jellyfin on a Raspberry Pi, setup a local WiFi on it and connect to it with an iPad that has a Jellyfin client installed?
Yup. If the sd card doesnt have enough space for everything, you could attach an m.2 hat to it as well. https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/using-m-2-hat-with-raspberry-pi-5/
Basically, jellyfin on the pi, with the wifi setup as an access point, and whatever amount of storage you need. The pi requires 5v/5a, so you’ll probably run into issues running off the car usb power, but a cheap 30amp hour battery should run it for 6-10 hours if my napkin math is right.
In my experience, you don’t even need the dedicated Jellyfin client. Just opening it up in a web browser works out of the box, so that’s potentially one less thing to download/install/manage for the clients.
That said, I’ve never tried to access Jellyfin from an iPad/iPhone/Mac so it might not be as seamless as my experiences on Android/Linux based devices. But I imagine they’d be fine; just test it out before you hit the road.
Generally the app is better. Compatible with more container formats, audio formats (surround sound, Dolby digital, etc), and has hardware supported decoding for h265 video in addition to h264.
You don’t need a special client, just a browser. Otherwise, yep!
Yes, I’ve done almost exactly this while traveling. You can even carry around a couple variously configured sd cards for different use cases. I had one with jellyfin for sharing locally and also Kodi for direct HDMI connection to TVs. There is a in app on Android for jellyfin called findroid that allows offline copies from the media server, which allowed me to not need the thing powered the entire time I wanted to watch something on my phone, just long enough to download it. Adding samba shares adds a other layer of accessibility. I had another SD Card with video game ROMs for retro gaming, but this one got left at home because it requires controllers and I didn’t think I’d use it that much. I had another with “little backup box” installed for automatically backing up my photos and videos after a day out exploring with my camera.
I used a Raspberry pi 5 for all of this, running from a battery backup, because I didn’t really need a keyboard once I had remote connections to my phone sorted out. Pick a rugged case and you case just toss it in your bag of chargers. It took up about as much space as a pack of cigarettes. Another option would be the Raspberry Pi 400, built into a keyboard. A little bulkier, but maybe more resilient in the face of technical difficulties.