<<Needs updating>>

AirPlay:

One of the powerful options on RaspBMC is ability to enable AirPlay. With AirPlay you can share the screen of pretty much all of the Apple Devices, and play music “remotely”.  I had been using AirPlay via my Apple TV, but this gives a person a much cheaper entry into the benefits of AirPlay.

All you have to do is go into the setup and enable AirPlay. Shutdown and unplug the Raspberry Pi. Plug it back in, and give it a run.

Note 1: Initially, when I had not unplugged the Pi, I got an error 15000 trying so AirPlay from my iMac. Unplugging resolved this.

Note 2: If you have OTA setup on your computer (HDHomerun) you can now stream this to your TV too. No need to buy multiple antennas for each TV… only downside is, you will have to switch channels on your computer. Will update if I find a more elegant solution.

Note 3: Purchase the MPEG2 and VC1 codec’s from the raspberrypi .org web site. Skipping the long story on the why…  bottom-line, if you are going to use the R-Pi as a media center, this is a must. Costs just a few $’s…

Basic Installation:

I chose to go with the  network image option. I would strongly recommend it. Make sure you are connected to the internet (wired) while starting the installation process.

For mac user’s you can use the following commands, to write the image file to the SD card. Please keep in mind, if you point to the wrong volume, you could destroy it. If you are not comfortable with the command line, there is a GUI based utility you can use, that can be downloaded from the raspbmc web site.

The following were my steps based on my mount point. Your’s could be different. Note: you need to change disk3s1 (unmounting) to rdisk3 (writing).

1. Show what the mount point of  the SD card is: $df -h
2. Unmount the SD Card: $sudo diskutil unmount /dev/disk3s1
3. Write the image to the disk: $sudo dd if=/Users/username/Downloads/installer.img of=/dev/rdisk3 bs=1m

Thru this process, you will not have to worry about making any selections. Everything is automatically done for you. The only thing you have to do at the end is select your language.

Once installation is completed, you will be presented with the XBMC user interface.

The Raspbmc defaults to the Confluence “skin”, and I have kept it as is. It is pretty neat and efficient. I will probably play around with different skin’s later.

Being a first time user of XBMC, took me a few minutes to figure out where things are located. I would recommend you do the same… spend a few minutes poking around.

Remote:

Initially I was using a keyboard and a mouse… This was getting clunky with all the wires etc. Did some reading and found a free app on the Apple App Store called XBMC remote.

Installed XBMC remote on the ipad. The XBMC Remote can find and control multiple raspbmc’s as long as they are on the same network. Use the ip address, the mac address, UID and PWD of the Pi, to enable the XBMC remote to connect to the Pi. Once connected the settings are saved. The remote also allows you to switch between multiple Pi’s on the fly. I would recommend assigning a fixed ip address for your Pi’s. It will make your life easier.

After having used this for a while, I would definitely recommend this app.

About:

Raspbmc is a port of the open source XBMC for the Raspberry Pi. XBMC stands for Xbox Media Center, which is a linux based open source software built to convert the Xbox (original, not the 360), into a pretty powerful media center.