As easy as Pi - Setting up a Raspberry Pi media centre

Since the launch of the very first Raspberry Pi back in 2012 I had wanted to get my hands on one but couldn’t really work out what I would do with it?  I’m not especially technical and certainly have no need (nor the motivation) to create anything whizzy like some of the other Raspberry Pi projects I’ve seen on DesignSpark!

So when I recently found myself with a spare TV for my study, but with no aerial connection in the room, it gave me a great opportunity to enter the world of Pi and create myself a media centre.

Initially I was concerned that it might be complicated to get setup, but I needn’t have worried – it was as easy as Pi and so I wanted to share my experience to show just how simple it is.

Which Pi to buy?

The first decision I had to make was which Pi I needed for the project.  My timing couldn’t have been better as only a few weeks prior the latest Raspberry Pi (the Pi 3) had just been released; not only is it more powerful than the previous version (10x more powerful than the original Pi 1 and 50% faster than the Pi 2!) but it has the very handy addition of wireless capability.  

So I bought myself the new Raspberry Pi 3 Model B and an official case from RS Components. Fortunately I already had an old keyboard, mouse, HDMI cable and micro SD card; so I had all the hardware I would need to get the project underway.

The software setup

Once I’d plugged all my peripherals into the board I needed an operating system to get my Pi up and running.  Using my laptop, I simply downloaded the latest version of NOOBS (an operating system installer that contains Raspian OS which is designed specifically for Raspberry Pi) from the Pi Foundation website.  This downloads as a ZIP file, so needed to be ‘unzipped’ and the files placed onto the SD card and slotted into the Pi.  I now had a fully operational Raspberry Pi, but it wasn’t yet a Media Centre; for this I needed to choose myself some software suitable for running on the Raspberry Pi.  After some very quick research online I chose OSMC (Open Source Media Centre).  From their website I was able to quickly download and install the software straight to my SD card – this had a really simple download and setup procedure, allowing me to configure it to my wireless network as part of the installation.

The initial setup

Now I had the OSMC software installed onto the SD card, I slotted it into my Pi and switched on the power.  On the first boot, the software finalises the installation and after a couple of minutes it was complete and I was presented with my first view of OSMC which initially needed me to select my language, country and time zone settings.

That’s it!  Within a matter of 20 minutes I had a fully functional media centre allowing me to play or stream TV, movies and music in my study… simple!