The Box

While I wait for my clear acrylic case to be shipped I have been keeping the Raspberry pi in the box it came in. This is (obviously) impractical as I have to disconnect and reconnect wires every time I use it. One thing with the Raspberry Pi is the huge community behind it doing all sorts of crazy things. Cases is one of the most popular mods that people are putting effort into. There are many official and unofficial manufacturers of cases designed specifically for the Raspi, but what about all those random items you have lying around? As I linked to in a previous post, people have made cases out of cigarette boxes and Lego. After some browsing a found a forum post where the OP was thinking about making a case out of the packaging his iPhone came in. That’s when it hit me. I always kept my iPhone boxes because I thought they were beautiful and I always wondered what I could do with them. So I dug up my old iPhone 3GS box and got to cutting it up. About an hour later I was finished (the cardboard is incredibly thick…) and I had a pretty decent looking housing for my media centre.

Bonus: you can use the piece of plastic that the iPhone comes in as a lid for the box, with the hole in the middle serving as airflow to prevent overheating!

                                                                                                       

                                                               

First boot of Raspbmc

                                               

The Software

Next step is installing a software to the SD card I purchased so that the Raspi can actually boot. I decided to go with Raspbmc since it seems to be the most fully functional XBMC solution for the Raspberry Pi. Raspbmc does not have a stable release yet, so there are still only release candidates which get updated quite often. The most current is RC5 which is what I installed. The process is to flash your SD card, insert it to your Raspi and power on. The rest of the process is automated, it downloads the necessary files, then installs and reboots into XBMC. My first time around was unsuccessful, possibly due to the fact I was plugged in with a composite cable instead of HDMI. RC5 seems to have an issue with composite cable and no image is shown. So I reformatted the SD card, plugged the pi in with HDMI instead and let the the files download and install and it worked! The Raspberry Pi booted into XBMC and my LG remote worked without any further tinkering! At this point the pi is basically very much useable, so after installing the 1channel.ch add-on I took a break and watched an episode of Scrubs. 

I have found a bug however! With certain LG remotes there is no “back” button. Just my luck! So this makes the pi a little less useable at this point as I had to plug in a keyboard to be able to back out to the main menu again. Some research shows there is a way to map a new button to act as the back button. Requires I SSH into the pi and edit a file called remote.xml. Now I run into a problem with SSH! For some reason I am not able to gain access to the pi from another computer. 

Another problem for another day! Happy to see the Raspberry Pi up and running regardless of my remote issues.

                                                                                                       

The Essential Accessories

So a Raspberry Pi is cheap yes, but still it isn’t a buy and turn on product. The Raspi still needs at minimum a power supply and an SD card of at least 2GB. And then you still need a screen and cable to the screen. I already have an LCD TV (LG) and an HDMI cable (yes the Raspi has HDMI out and is capable of 1080p!) and I managed to dig up an old blackberry charger that is listed as compatible with the Raspi. I didn’t have an SD card available however so I had to go out and buy this Sandisk Ultra 4GB SDHC for 10.29$ tax in.

The Raspberry Pi also comes “naked” all components exposed and for every day use can be fragile. I have seen some people open up their TV’s to install the Raspi, I’ve seen mounts to attach them to the rear of a TV and various enclosures. You can basically make your own case out of anything, including lego and cigarette boxes. I chose to buy a clear acrylic case to show off the awesomeness of the Raspi while still protecting it. Coming from the UK though so delivery delay of 5-7 days according to Royal Mails website. This came to 9.47$ after shipping and exchange rates.

Cost so far: 69.76$

                                                                                                       

                                                               

The board really is the size of a credit card!