A few years later I bought a Raspberry Pi 2 Model B and this became our main Kodi media centre, replacing the Apple TV 2 and coupled with a Rii keyboard. It was much faster & more stable running Libreelec.

A couple more years passed and I realized I still had my first Pi, complete with an awesome perspex case, so I had a look for projects to complete with it. I stumbled across the PiHole project and the rest is history.

PiHole is a network ad blocker/filter and DNS server. It has a great browser interface & you can add lots of adblock/ublock blocklists to the pi, to block ads on all devices on the network at a hardware level. Unlike adblockers on a browser which use more cosmetic ways of blocking ads, the pihole blocks them at DNS level, meaning a request to the ad/blocked server never leaves the network. From a privacy standpoint this is huge. It also means I can control traffic/trackers on devices such as our Smart TV and iOS devices. It’s surprising how many requests these devices make without your knowledge.

PiHole’s web interface shows all traffic & destinations and allows you to whitelist or blacklist IP’s & domains for fine-grained control over outgoing traffic on your network.

I took my setup one step further & coupled it with DNSCrypt 2.0 to encrypt all of my outbound DNS traffic. DNSCrypt coupled with PiHole on the pi & HTTPS everywhere in my browser ensures no unencrypted traffic leaves my browser. All DNS lookups are encrypted & I use non logging DNSCrypt Servers for my DNS lookups. This adds an extra layer of protection for my network traffic & prevents eavesdropping & sniffing of my traffic.

The Pi Hole raspberry pi sits in a cupboard downstairs and filters all of our network traffic. We have around 20 Wi-Fi connected devices on the network & around 10 hard-wired devices & it copes fine. It’s running 24/7 and the blocklist contains almost 1.3 million blocked domains without a hitch. Even with DNScrypt running alongside Pi Hole (which are both Python based) and a MySQL server for Kodi, the old Pi with its modest hardware isn’t stressed, runs silently, uses very little CPU time and has a 50% memory footprint. It’s even running the original SD card which has been in use since 2012.

This is a great solution. It’s silent, uses only a few watts of power & saves thousands of extra requests per day, not to mention the amount of data which is never downloaded. Browsing is generally much quicker on my home network & an added benefit is that we don’t see advertising on catch up TV services on our Smart TV.

I’m going to do a full post on setting up the pi for this usage, so if you would like to see that, check back soon.

For those of you willing to dive in, you need a Pi running raspbian. You can install Pi Hole using the instructions on their website

I used these instructions to install DNScrypt 2.0

It’s hard to believe that the Raspberry Pi team have managed to squeeze so much power out of the same form factor & price point. The fact that it’s a quad-core means that everything feels much snappier. Less like a mega budget hobby machine & more like a mid range desktop PC. It will always be limited by processing power & RAM, not to mention raw graphic processing, but when you consider the price point & opportunity to try any project you like for very little financial outlay the Raspberry Pi will always be a great machine.

I really wanted this Pi to replace my ageing B+ which was used as a RASPbmc media centre. While great gains were made by Sam Nazarko with regards menu speed & performance, you can’t beat the extra grunt, ram & processing power of the latest Pi 2. I also wanted a viable replacement for my Apple TV 2 which is jailbroken & running Kodi. I also have an ATV1 which is great but uses much more power than a Pi & gets extremely hot, not to mention the pretty huge footprint in comparison to a pi.

I also opted for one of the 16GB Sandisk Extreme Micro SD cards. The SD cards have historically been a nightmare for me on the Pi, with corruption and poor compatibility with unbranded cards. Hopefully going for a well manufactured high spec card I’ll get the best I/O speed and a good long life. For the price I don’t mind them burning out, but just not too quickly.

Many of you will also know that I’m currently in between houses. My wife & I are in the process of relocating & downsizing so we are staying with Family why we look for a new place. This means my lovely hard-wired network is in storage & I’m relying on wifi. I hate wifi. It’s unstable, throughput is always compromised by interference and environmental factors & it’s generally a poor substitute for a hard-wired environment. This presented a major headache for me. The only USB wifi dongle I have is an Edimax EW-7811UTC which would not play nicely with OSMC (the new name for RASPbmc). As much as I tried to configure the wifi dongle the connection would fail. I even tried to SSH in and setup the connection manually but the connection kept dropping & was a PITA to get right. So I decided to give Openelec another go.

I generally stick to what i know when it works. I love crystalbuntu & RASPbmc so I was loathed to use a distro not produced by Sam. However in a few months I can go back to my wired network & return to OSMC. In the mean time we have Openelec.

Installation was painless. I prefer not to use n00bs so I used terminal on my iMac to download Openelec and copy the distro to my SD card. All simple enough, 10 minutes later all was ready and it was time to boot up the Raspberry Pi 2 with Openelec. I was stunned by the boot times and snappiness of the whole experience. Boot takes seconds from power on to the main Kodi window. The menus are super fast & fluid with the standard Kodi Confluence skin. Browsing through & adding to my library is vastly improved & as a whole this media centre setup is unbeatable. Power consumption is tiny, the footprint of the pi (which is now rear mounted on the TV) is ideal and it’s a fanless design so no worries with noise. I did fit an OmniVESA mount to my Pi & a heatsink to aid cooling, but I currently have it mounted without a case on the back of my Samsung TV and it’s a dream to use.

Something that has always put me off the Pi as a media centre & kept me using the Apple TV 2 was remote support. As the whole experience on the Pi 2 is fast & native (doesn’t require jailbreaking & hacks like the ATV2) I decided to address the remote issue. I went for a Wireless Keyboard which is a tiny little keyboard with remote control buttons & built-in mouse trackpad. I reviewed the keyboard here. This is the perfect solution. I can type searches in without using an on-screen keyboard & because it’s wireless and doesn’t require line of sight I can mount the raspberry pi out of sight keeping my living room looking neat.

I have tried throwing so many media files at Openelec on the Raspberry Pi 2 and I’m yet to find something that won’t play. The CPU is largely idle & I can even ramp up fancy de-interlacing and other post processing without stressing the Pi too much. It plays with no lag at all. What’s more the built-in Openelec settings mean I can set my wifi connection from the gui & the connection is rock solid. The distro is also auto updating & the software footprint is tiny. I’ve also had the media centre up for weeks without a single crash. It’s rock solid. The only issue I did run into was the appearance of a coloured box in the top right hand corner of the Pi. I’ve never experienced this before but the box is caused when the power supply isn’t supplying sufficient power. I upgraded the supply to one of the official Raspberry Pi 2A supplies which I picked up from Pimoroni along with the OmniVESA.

If you haven’t already tried the Raspberry Pi 2 you really should. I have a few projects in the works which will require a few more units & I hope to write these up soon.

Have you got a Raspberry pi 2? What kind of projects are you doing? Let me know in the comments below.

 Since then, in April 2014 I put all of my belongings into storage, with the exception of a few bits of clothing & my iMac. The point of this was to stay with family, clear off all of my student debt & plan for a big relocation. The debt has gone & the house hunt is underway, but in that time I’ve only had my iMac. I’ve been able to update XBMC right through the change to Kodi and up to the latest version without any issues. I’ve now got my stuff out of storage and realised that Crystalbuntu hasn’t been updated to kodi so the ATV1 is out (I use a lot of add ons which require later versions of Kodi) and the ATV2 is shocking using Kodi. it’s slow, laggy & drops frames. So out came the Pi for an experiment.

I first tried with OSMC Alpha 4, which was quick but did not play well with my Edimax 7711UN USB wifi adaptor. The built in wifi config tool doesn’t work. I setup my wifi with connman but after each reboot I had to go into terminal and reconnect. The connection kept dropping and it wasn’t ideal. I decided to give Openelec another go. I used this back in 2013 and whilst it worked it was much slower than Raspbmc. I installed Openelec on my Class 10 32GB Sandisk SD and I’m so surprised how quick it is now.

Whilst the installer is less friendly than that of OSMC (OSMC uses a handy gui based application while Openelec relies on terminal) the overall experience is excellent. It boots from power on to Kodi in seconds. After setting up my NFS shares and scanning & scraping all of my media to the library I started using Kodi via Openelec. The menus are pretty snappy. A little bit of lag navigating around the UI but considering it’s only a 700MHz single core ARM chipset I’m more than happy with it. The built in Openelec config tool is amazing. I was able to visually scan for my wifi network, select it and connect. And that’s it. I haven’t had to touch the config since. It maintains a connection and my install has been up for 2 weeks solid without a single crash. Initial loading times of media are excellent & I’ve not experienced any issues at all streaming my media from my local network. I have a lot of my Blu Rays on my NAS as 1080p MKV files and I’m able to stream them at full framerate without any dropped frames at all. Considering this is over Wifi I’m very impressed.

The first movie I watched from start to finish was Point Break. This is a 25GB MKV file with 5.1 audio and full 1080p resolution. I watched it start to finish without a single blip. I was stunned. The hardware decoding is a dream & after messing with the colour settings on my TV I’m really happy with the picture quality & colours. Also the sound appears to be much better than either of my Apple TV’s. The 802.11N Edimax 7711UN wifi adaptor worked really well streaming this from my NAS.

I also use the youtube addon a lot. We watch quite a lot of daily & travel vloggers in our household & the little Openelec Pi can handle everything. I’ve updated a few times since installing Openelec and each update has worked flawlessly. I love this setup. Unlike the ATV2 which relied on a jailbreak, this is 100% supported by Openelec. No hacking required. The playback performance is superb & I couldn’t be happier.

I was initially put off by the lack of decent remote support on the Pi, but I invested in a great wireless keyboard aimed at media centre users called the Rii i8 which I reviewed here. The keyboard is the ideal companion and the setup I have now is superb. Using a keyboard has the benefits of having a full keyboard in your hands as opposed to using the on screen keyboard. A wonderful bonus when searching using text. Another great advantage is the fact that it uses 2.4GHz RF instead of IR so no line of sight required. It means that I’ve rear mounted the Pi on the back of our Samsung TV and it makes the setup even more seamless.

I can’t wait to see where this project goes & I’m really excited to see how quick the UI runs on the quad core Raspberry Pi 2. the extra RAM will also help. I’ve got one on order so will update you in the future.

In the meantime, grab a Raspberry Pi And install Kodi.

This week I finally took the plunge and bought a small wireless keyboard for the Raspberry Pi. The Pi in question is a B+ raspberry pi running at 700MHz and sporting 512MB ram. I’ve got a 32GB Sandisk Class 10 SD card in it and one of the excellent Pibow cases from Pimoroni.

Up until a few weeks ago I’d been using an Apple TV 1 as my main media centre (upgraded with a CrystalHD hardware video decoder & running XBMC) and a Jailbroken ATV2 as my backup. The Apple TV one is great, it’s fast & snappy but it’s a bit of a power hog & can take a while to boot up. Also Crystalbuntu is yet to be upgraded to Kodi as CrystalHD support was removed a few versions back. The ATV2 was great up until XBMC frodo when the hardware limitations started to show. I needed an alternative so I switched to Openelec on the Rapsberry Pi.

I’ve used XBMC on the Pi in the past and it was awful. Random crashes and slow menus, but this was when it was in it’s infancy. Also the major barrier was remote support. I tried installing a gpio IR receiver and using my own remote but it was laggy and not very precise. I also tried using a Flirc receiver but again it wasn’t exactly precise.

This time around I opted for this amazing little keyboard. It has media controls built in at the top, as well as a full qwerty keyboard and a track pad for good measure. It uses a small 2.4GHz USB receiver and contains a rechargeable battery pack & charging cable. This is the ultimate for the raspberry pi. The range is pretty epic & I’ve experienced no lag in menus on the latest version of openelec & Kodi 14.1. What’s more, because it’s not IR I’ve been able to mount the pi out of sight behind the TV. Bonus.

It just works right out of the box, I love that. It’s really responsive & very ergonomic. Also it makes text searches in Kodi a doddle as you can type. No more on screen keyboard.

The keyboard itself is very light & has a rubber coating like old PC gamepads. Battery life seems to be excellent.

I’ve found openelec on the Pi to be very stable. I’ve had it on without a reboot for 2 weeks without any glitches or crashes. I’m also using it with my Edimax 7811un Wifi adaptor and it’s been perfect. Signal is good considering how far away it is from the router & I’ve been able to stream 1080P MKV files without a hitch. No buffering or lag.

The pi has been flawless & I intend to upgrade this Media Centre to a Raspberry Pi 2 just as soon as I can get my hands on one. I’m going to run some power consumption tests but you can be sure it’s minimal. I’ll do a full write up on the Openelec/Raspberry pi experience soon but if you are thinking of going down this route I would definitely recommend the Rii i8 Keyboard. It’s currently on offer over at Amazon for £11.99 with free delivery. It’s an absolute bargain

 Rii i8 Mini 2.4GHz Wireless Keyboard with Touchpad Mouse for PC, PAD, XBox 360, PS3, Google Android TV Box, HTPC, IPTV (UK Layout) (Black)