Hi there,

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.

  • TheButtonJustSpins@infosec.pubEnglish
    5·
    2 months ago

    If you’re carrying your media with you, you could run Jellyfin on the server to provide access to the media to anyone connected to its wifi.

    • Meldrik@lemmy.wtfOPEnglish
      3·
      2 months ago

      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?

      • rudyharrelson@lemmy.radioEnglish
        2·
        2 months ago

        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.

      • DaGeek247@fedia.io
        2·
        2 months ago

        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.

      • Wolf314159@startrek.websiteEnglish
        1·
        2 months ago

        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.